Volunteers Lead Louisiana Relief Efforts : Survivors: The poor, and their fragile dwellings, appear the hardest hit. Ordinary ice becomes the area’s hottest commodity.

The Winn-Dixie supermarket was closed by storm damage, its broken windows boarded over and its food spoiling. But the parking lot was a magnet Friday for the homeless and the hungry.

One of them was Amelia Berard, 54, who sat listlessly in an aging silver Chrysler, nibbling the three pancakes served up by a group of Southern Baptists who had driven in from Texas with a self-contained cook trailer.

“The roof was blown off my house and everything was floating in the water,” said Berard. “My handicapped brother moved into a two-bedroom trailer with eight other people, but I don’t have anywhere to go. I need everything.”

The scene in the parking lot of this small town on the banks of the Bayou Teche was repeated countless times across South Louisiana on Friday as residents began to understand the enormity of Hurricane Andrew’s damage.

In most cases, the storm appeared to uproot the lives and homes of the poorest people in this hard-scrabbled region. Mobile homes and shanties that lined the small roads and bayous were overturned and splintered while the stately plantation homes and other substantial structures went virtually unscathed.

At least 167,000 homes and businesses remained without electricity Friday. The American Red Cross and other charitable groups were providing 150,000 meals a day. State health officials estimated that 5,000 wells had been contaminated, raising the danger of bad water across the rural area. Residents were advised to boil water before drinking it. In areas without power for boiling, they were told to purify it with drops of bleach.

Gov. Edwin W. Edwards estimated property damage would exceed $100 million in South Louisiana; $200 million worth of sugar cane has been destroyed.

While the first contingents of federal troops arrived in the devastated South Florida area, Louisiana appeared to be coping with its problems on its own. National Guardsmen were on duty, partly to protect against possible looting and partly to assist in feeding and caring for the storm’s victims.

Half a dozen Guardsmen stood in the Winn-Dixie store parking lot, directing traffic and watching the steady stream of people coming for free food and bottled water. At the airport in Baton Rouge, 50 miles away, a convoy of Guard trucks was loaded with food rations to be distributed in the hardest-hit parishes, as Louisiana counties are called.

The public relief effort has been augmented by private organizations and individuals who have responded to the huge needs of the area. A Texas company sent a truckload of the hottest commodity in South Louisiana--ice. And numerous groups, such as the Southern Baptist Convention, have sent relief teams.

Jerry Briscoe, a 68-year-old retired oil worker from Bullard, Tex., was washing pots and pans in the Winn-Dixie parking lot about noon on Friday. His Baptist Church had spent $30,000 for the self-contained food trailer that Briscoe and other parishioners had towed to Cajun country on Wednesday.

“It’s a humbling, yet gratifying experience,” said Briscoe. “Every one of us would rather be doing something else--fishing or golfing or working. But we’ve chosen to do this to help these people.”

Amelia Berard was in need of that help. She and other family members had fled to Alexandria in northern Louisiana when Andrew approached their area. Like thousands of other residents, she had returned to her home Wednesday to find that the hurricane had wreaked substantial damage.

Her most immediate concern was finding a safe place for her handicapped brother. But she said that her appeals to Red Cross officials in nearby New Iberia for assistance went unanswered.

“All they told me was that things are moving as fast as they can,” she said, with some anger. “We need help now. He can’t stay in that trailer much longer.”

Berard and her sister-in-law had come upon the food wagon while driving with several children in search of potable water. The line of people in front of the wagon had brought them in for their first meal of the day about 11 a.m.

Many were making the best of a bad situation. Down the road in Franklin, another hard-hit community, V. J. St. Blanc III was selling emergency goods out of his hardware store despite the lack of electricity.

“I call it my headlight,” said St. Blanc, patting the miner’s light strapped around his head and attached to a battery pack in the small of his back.

He was guiding customers into the store, aiming the light at rakes and hammers and boards and nails, then escorting them out again with their purchases.

Delcambre, a tiny town of 2,000 on the Bayou Vermillion, experienced a rare traffic jam in the wake of the storm. Three of the town’s four police officers were needed to direct traffic around the Canal Ice House, an old-fashioned operation supplying the precious commodity.