Links to daily newspaper articles are only good for 24 hours, so I am copy-and-pasting this from today's paper, as posted on nola.com:

Appreciative locals itching to help Californians

Friday, October 26, 2007
By Bruce Nolan

Wounded New Orleanians helped by the kindness of strangers two years ago are looking toward fire-ravaged Southern California with an urge to help, but local disaster managers are urging them to wait until it is more clear exactly what the stricken communities need.

"I'm getting phone calls: 'Can we go? Can we go?,' " said Archdeacon Dennis McManis, operations director of the Episcopal Diocese of Louisiana's office of disaster response. "I'm telling them, 'Let's sit back and see what they need.' "

Officials with major faith-based relief organizations said they are asking disaster agencies in the San Diego area what they can do to help families affected by the wildfires, which have destroyed more than 1,500 homes in eight counties in the past week. Catholic Charities USA sent its top disaster official to San Diego to do reconnaissance and make a list of specific needs.

Images of families distraught about their losses have particular resonance in the New Orleans area, where tens of thousands of families received large and small gifts of aid, housing and other gestures of generosity in the weeks immediately after Hurricane Katrina.

"But we also remember how we got inundated in those first days with people wanting to give us stuff -- often stuff we didn't need. Or people coming here and just telling us what they could do for us," McManis said.

Some agencies, such as Catholic Charities USA and the Episcopal Church USA, are soliciting donations for Southern California on their Web sites, www.catholiccharitiesusa.org and www.episcopalchurch.org/elife/.

Mark Jones, the local disaster director for the Salvation Army, said that agency is in California caring for homeowners and firefighters. While it certainly will remain involved for months, the agency is not yet asking for special aid from other parts of the country, he said.

Elsewhere, the Archdiocese of New Orleans said its teachers would organize collections of toiletries for shelters based on early word that those items would be useful, spokeswoman Sarah Comiskey said. At least one school, Pope John Paul II in Slidell, is raising money. Comiskey said the archdiocese also is exploring the possibility of "twinning" a few healthy New Orleans-area church parishes with some fire-damaged church parishes in Southern California.

Tim Martin, executive director of Building Better Communities, an evangelical relief organization building houses in Central City, said he is headed back to San Diego, his hometown, to check out conditions and see what help his organization can offer.

"We know there are going to be needs, but until we get on the ground there, it's hard to say what they'll be," Martin said.

Meanwhile, the nonprofit agency's leadership has decided to canvass its Hurricane Katrina donors nationwide for help for California families affected by the fires, said Pastor Rick Grover of Journey Christian Church, which sponsors Building Better Communities.

"Tim's trip out there is to confirm, not whether we can help, but how we can help," he said.

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Bruce Nolan can be reached at bnolan@timespicayune.com or (504) 826-3344.