Talk Justice, an LSC Podcast: Rebuilding Lives After Disaster
Contact
Maria Duvuvuei
Communications Strategist
(202) 295-1542
WASHINGTON – Leaders of nonprofit law firms discuss their disaster response work for major storms and floods in Texas, North Carolina and Louisiana on LSC’s “Talk Justice” podcast, released today. The conversation was recorded at a briefing for the U.S. House of Representatives on September 11, where these local leaders educated Congressional staff on the importance of providing legal services in the aftermath of natural disasters.
Robert Doggett, Executive Director of Texas RioGrande Legal Aid (TRLA), joined to talk about the July floods in central Texas; Ashley Campbell, executive director of Legal Aid of North Carolina (LANC), spoke about the ongoing response to Tropical Storm Helene; and Laura Tuggle, executive director of Southeast Louisiana Legal Services (SLLS), discussed her state’s history of dealing with major storms like Hurricanes Ida and Katrina. The panel was moderated by Father Pius Pietrzyk, O.P., Vice President of LSC’s Board of Directors.
In the weeks following the immediate and obvious devastation caused by a natural disaster, people inevitably start encountering legal problems to do with insurance, FEMA applications, custody agreements, the title to their home and the loss of other important documents, Doggett explained.
“That’s where an advocate can play such a crucial role,” he said. “We're able to identify the issues, prioritize them, think about what they do next, and that's what you do [as a lawyer].”
While people often imagine the work of a lawyer to be filing one lawsuit after another, Doggett said that isn’t the case at all.
“We analyze problems and try to solve them, and almost every time, you can do that without going to court,” he said.
Campbell shared the story of one LANC client who lost both his wife and his home during Tropical Storm Helene. He was struggling to access his wife’s life insurance benefits, which he needed to care for their son. LANC helped him secure those funds and also assisted with his FEMA application and home insurance claim. The client wanted to move away from the site of his tragic loss, Campell explained, but he also needed to avoid a foreclosure on his home, which would ruin his credit.
“For him, turning the property over to the mortgage lender was a good result, [and] we were able to get the lender to take that insurance money, take the land back, satisfy the loan, and he was able to move on,” Campbell said. “Then finally, we were able to do a new will for him so that he and his son would have security.”
Campbell explained that LANC expects to be taking on many more cases for people with legal issues resulting from the 2024 storm.
“Folks with experience in disaster [response] believe that it will take 10 years for North Carolina to recover from this storm,” she said. “We are in the second year of recovery, and we expect that as legal services providers, we'll be there for six [more] years.”
Tuggle said that SLLS has handled 6,372 cases from Hurricane Ida since it struck in 2021. She explained that after disasters, SLLS spends a lot of time helping seniors with insurance, accessing recovery assistance, bankruptcy, scams, fraud and heirs’ property issues where home titles have not been passed down through the proper legal processes. Often, she explained, people are experiencing several of these problems at the same time.
“Just imagine you're a 70-year-old disaster survivor... and you were trying to go through all of this on your own,” Tuggle said. “It's very, very difficult.”
LSC funds legal services in the wake of natural disasters. More information about disaster legal services can be found at LSC.gov/disaster.
Talk Justice episodes are available online and on Spotify, YouTube and Apple Podcasts. The podcast is sponsored by LSC’s Leaders Council.