KILN, Miss. -- The floor of the warehouse is covered with clothes piled knee-high, creating a mountainous topography. A bit of concrete is visible near the entrance, where the pile tapers flat, like ocean waves rolling to the shore.

Ellie Clark, 67, is the lone worker in the warehouse this day, her tiny frame hard to spot among the multicolored garments in this busy, "Where's Waldo" landscape.

"Now what hurricane victim needs this?" asks Clark, a grandmother from Smith Mountain Lake. She spikes a beige, patent leather pump into a box of trash.

She folds what she can, picking through too-old polo shirts and new clothes with price tags, piling what's good into a box as tall as her waist.

These are the leftovers of what was donated to the Kiln area after Hurricane Katrina. Now, everything must be packed and shipped away.

Clark looks at her watch. It's nearly lunchtime. She has a long afternoon ahead.

Help is everywhere in this chain of coastal Hancock County communities -- Kiln and Waveland, Picayune and Bay St. Louis.

In a Waveland parking lot, firefighters and Federal Emergency Management Agency workers share free dinners in a tent run by the Rainbow Family -- vegans serving pork chops and rice. Church groups run a supermarket where groceries don't cost anything.

Volunteer doctors staff a medical tent, next to an area with a sign advertising alternative medicine. From people who pack brown-bag lunches to those who gut waterlogged homes, every hand helps here after the storm.

"It was like taking a small city and putting it in a blender and dumping it out flat," said Mike Sweeney, who is in charge of food, water and shelter at the county's Emergency Operations Center. "We could not do this without the volunteers that have come to help."

The Roanoke Valley is contributing. The Interfaith Coalition of Neighbors Helping Neighbors, a group of synagogues and churches, sends teams of volunteers here each week, adopting the 2,000-resident community of Kiln. Ten volunteers -- mostly from South Roanoke United Methodist Church -- spent last week clearing trees, gutting houses and helping as needed.

Nearly three months after the storm, there is much to be done. Thirty-seven documented tornadoes, 100 mph winds and flooding left 80 percent of Hancock County's buildings damaged, nearly all of them destroyed. Even the county's roughly 65 identified fatalities were not enough to scare these people away.

There are a thousand stories here, a thousand ghosts. Wind whips through abandoned property where trailers sit with open doors. "We are alive," is spray-painted on the wall; scattered among someone's belongings is a framed picture of Jesus.

Katrina took a lot from these people. There were 46,000 souls in Hancock County before the storm and an estimated 25,000 after. For those who stayed, the storm did not destroy their determination to rebuild. This is their home, residents say of the place where full moons sparkle over now-calm gray water; it will be better than before.

Rebuilding is slow, but 250 to 400 FEMA trailers are installed in Hancock County each day, delivered from the fairgrounds where a billboard still advertises a barrel race for Aug. 27. They are planted in yards beside empty foundations. Some are decorated with American flags or the occasional string of Christmas lights.

Glancing around, it's easy to feel overwhelmed. Yet the only way to rebuild is not by looking around, but by looking ahead.

Residents are doing just that, slowly and with extra hands of help.

A sheet tied to a fence along Highway 603 holds a message in red and blue letters.

"Thank you for helping."

Monday

Bill Clark, the 69-year-old leader of Roanoke's Interfaith Coalition group, walked down stairs leading to an underground cement-walled room he mistook for a Cold War bomb shelter.

In his low Southern drawl, Paul Ladner, 55 -- a lifelong Kiln resident who called the team to clear yard debris -- explained that the shelter is where 16 people huddled during the storm.

The space was not much bigger than a few office cubicles holding bunk beds, a stack of patio chairs, a table topped by a lantern. They hid for hours as Katrina blew the rain sideways, not down into their shelter.

Adults took turns sleeping, and smoking in the stairway. Mothers took turns holding nine children. They brought cookies and had underground picnics.

Surviving Hurricane Camille in 1969 prompted Ladner to spend three years building the backyard shelter, working on it nights and weekends.

When the group emerged after Katrina, they didn't know the extent of the damage. Debris in Ladner's yard alone took his grandkids six days to clear.

"We could not realize how much destruction was in here," Ladner said.

Tuesday

The lot at 326 Nicholson holds an A-shaped roof smashed beside a tree. It shelters jumbled contents of the attic -- a porcelain doll, a random shoe, faded packages of McCall's sewing patterns. Except for piles of splinters, shingles and boards, the rest of the house is gone.

A little red storage shed rests crookedly in the yard. It was just dropped there, like the farmhouse in the Wizard of Oz.

Appropriately, this homeowner's name is Dorothy.

A FEMA inspector stops by at 7:45 this morning as the Interfaith Coalition team's bus drives past, en route to assignments and breakfast.

Dorothy Smith, 44, jokes with the inspector that she is usually a better housekeeper.

Smith and her husband, Robert, now live in a FEMA trailer across the railroad tracks. Only a treehouse remains standing on her property, high above in the branches.

A paper sign across the street reminds sightseers, "this rubble represents our lives and our dreams."

Wednesday

The Friday before Hurricane Katrina hit, Ann Lanthrop sat on the deck of a Bay St. Louis restaurant, having drinks with a friend.

"Who would want to live anywhere else?" she asked.

Then, boom, everything was gone.

Now, she sits on a cot in a Waveland parking lot known as "tent city." She's got a sore throat and a sinus infection. A FEMA trailer stands in her lot.

But by visiting this medical clinic, where Interfaith Coalition members Dr. Bob Roth and Dr. Lee Anne Steffe spent the day working, she at least got free medicine.

The 40-year-old teaches at Bay High School, the last school in Mississippi to open for the 2005-06 school year.

It opened Nov. 7.

Thursday

The home was partially gutted when the Interfaith Coalition team arrived at this Bay St. Louis lot, where the mud ground can crack like Spanish tile.

During the coalition's weeklong visit, group leader Bill Clark developed "porcupine feet"; clods of mud and pine needles stuck solid beneath his boots.

Sometime between ripping out drywall, being interviewed by a reporter from Roanoke's WDBJ (Channel 7) and spraying studs with a mold and gunk-killing bleach solution, coalition volunteers meet the homeowner, who arrives and tells her story.

Pam Naylor is a teacher at Bay High who, before moving to Mississippi, was assured there was no flooding in her neighborhood when Camille ripped through 36 years ago.

When Katrina came, she ended up on the roof.

She was rescued by a man down the street who launched his Boston Whaler.

Her FEMA-issued trailer now stands in the yard, hooked up and running.

Friday

Richard Grayson's life is full of what used to be.

He used to own a cat, Penelope, who was hiding when he evacuated in a hurry. Branches and brush pile higher than Grayson's head as he walks the lonely path to what used to be his house.

This is where the steps were, he says, pointing to a bare spot in the concrete, where cinder squares lie.

He points to what he thinks used to be a washing machine -- a pile of cream metal smashed like a soda can in the woods.

"It's like you didn't have a life before," he said.

Now, what used to be his neighborhood is on display like a garage sale.

Unmatched belongings -- a rusted bike, old rifles, beer steins, pots, pans and crystal vases caked in mud -- sit in neat groups on the ground.

Since Katrina took everything away, he still finds pieces. A maroon marble-top wash basin, his claw-foot tub. "I really don't have no place to go," he said. "And I don't want to go anyplace else."

By the end of the week, Jesse Beavers, the Interfaith Coalition's young he-man, decided he wants to come back again. His grandfather, Prentice Moran, said he would return with him.

Bill Clark marveled that the people who left Roanoke as strangers became good friends. His wife, Ellie, was amazed she worked alongside volunteers from South Carolina to Kansas.

"It was just a lot of people pitching in," she said of the experience.

"There's no quick fix ... You're just a piece of the puzzle."

The group would leave Mississippi at 2 p.m. Friday, driving through the night, leaving the ocean behind for the Virginia mountains.

Yet before the group leaves, Ellie Clark sorts and folds in the clothes warehouse. She picks up an aqua silk dress with puffy sleeves. It's not suited for a hurricane survivor, but perfect for a 1980s prom.

A dirty pink bunny, a worn red polo shirt -- they all go in a box with the trash.

She folds and boxes what she can, continuing her work and slowly doing her part to make a dent toward cleanup.

The Interfaith Coalition of Neighbors Helping Neighbors is seeking volunteers and donations. Contact the organization at interfaithroanoke@ juno.com