Coralie Chun Matayoshi, chief executive of the Hawai'i chapter of the American Red Cross, is among Hawai'i people participating in Hurricane Katrina relief efforts. In response to a recent request for an interview, she sent this e-mail to The Advertiser.

As I travel to different communities throughout Louisiana, I have been touched over and over again by the generosity of the human spirit that is guiding us out of the dark and into the light of a better day.

I heard of a man who fed 200 people trapped in a church for several days. When he ran out of food, he would swim through the floodwater to his own home and retrieve still-edible items from his freezer to feed his starving neighbors.

A single mother of little means who works at a hotel took in a family who fled the devastation of New Orleans.

A family happened to stop by the Broadmoor Presbyterian Church shelter in Baton Rogue to drop off donated items. There, they met and befriended a 69-year-old woman who was swept out of her home and had to hang on to a clothesline for half a day to survive. When the helicopter came to rescue her from the water, she was suspended by only one arm because the other arm ached too much from the wait. Now both arms are unbearably sore, after being practically pulled from their sockets. But she is alive, and being cared for by the family who stopped by the church.

The Broadmoor church operates a preschool, but classes have been postponed to accommodate evacuees living in the shelter. This puts a strain on the working parents of preschoolers, but they are making do. At least they have jobs.

Residents of Kenner, 13 miles from New Orleans, weren't so lucky. On the way to Kenner, the bayou reeked of sewage as military convoys brought supplies to an area without electricity or water. While not all of the structures had suffered wind damage, many homes had been flooded. We met one family who had never before been flooded out in all their 25 years of living there.

Here they were, throwing out rugs, salvaging furniture, and bleaching their walls to get rid of the mildew, which grew rampant in the humid conditions. Residents can only gain access to their homes from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m., so they had to work quickly.

Exhausted and sweaty, they were in remarkably good spirits. In the midst of this ghost town, it seemed odd for one neighbor to be mowing his lawn; it must have been his attempt at normalcy.

The city of Slidell, right across Lake Pontchartrain from New Orleans, seems to have taken the brunt of the hurricane winds. Steel beams twisted like pretzels were amidst houses reduced to matchsticks piled in disarray. Whole houses near the water had been blown off their pilings, while others sagged sideways into the snake-infested water.

Despite the almost insurmountable challenge of cleaning up, an air of optimism prevailed, as American Red Cross emergency response vehicles dotted the roadsides offering food, water, and hope to the weary residents of Louisiana.