Caked with muck and dripping sweat on a 98-degree morning this month, Marcus Magy wheeled a barrow full of moldy wallboard to a curbside pile. He had a long, dirty day ahead.

"This is my summer vacation," he said with good cheer.

It was also a family vacation for Magy, a 23-year-old engineer from Minneapolis. His parents, David and Susie Magy of Plymouth, were on their second trip to repair houses hammered by Hurricane Katrina.

His sister, Michelle, joined them inside a battered bungalow that looked just the way the storm and flood left it a year ago.

"My God, this is our own country, and a year later it is still like a war zone," David Magy said.

The Magys were from Nechama, a Jewish disaster-response group in Minnesota that has sent more than 300 volunteers to the Gulf Coast this year. They are part of a charitable army from Minnesota and across the country that keeps coming to help the tens of thousands of people whose lives remain shattered by the most devastating natural disaster in American history.

Every day, on streets where hope is hard to find, volunteer and faith groups are shouldering much of the burden of the region's recovery.

They are joining forces to help rebuild entire communities. They are starting service projects that will last for years. And they are playing such an extraordinary role because local governments are too beleaguered to meet the immense needs of residents and because some forms of federal aid have yet to arrive.

A year after Katrina hit, large swaths of the region remain wrecked and ghostly. More than 350,000 residents are still scattered nationwide. There are critical shortages of basic services such as doctors. Authorities have found more bodies this summer in the debris of 135,000 ruined homes.

The federal government has allocated $109 billion in aid to five Gulf Coast states hit by hurricanes last fall, but in many places, rebuilding has barely begun.

If churches hadn't helped, "our community would be at least six months behind where it is today," said Joseph Difatta Jr., a councilman in St. Bernard Parish, a New Orleans suburb largely leveled by Katrina.

"About 50 percent of our people are senior citizens -- no way they could muck out their homes," Difatta said. "A church will send 15, 20 people to each home, and suddenly it gets done. People are so grateful not just for the help, but for human beings who are so kind and encouraging."

Providing money and muscle

With a staggering load of work remaining, volunteers keep heading south.

This month, Orion Associates, a Minnesota social services company, sent its fifth team of roofers, electricians and other workers to New Orleans' devastated Ninth Ward. With labor and supplies from hardware stores, technical schools and lumber yards in Minnesota, the teams have practically adopted elderly homeowners, with plans to see their houses from cleanup to final painting. The next work crew plans to make the trek in November.

"We all pay our own way down there, so that every dollar anyone donates goes into these houses," said Jeff Greischar, 51, a general contractor from Fairmount who has gone three times, took his whole family in June, then came home to twist arms for more supplies.

In another concerted effort, Minnesota's United Methodist churches plan to carry on the work that more than 30 teams of volunteers started this year, said Heather Klason, a coordinator for the 389-congregation Minnesota Conference. They have also sent tons of supplies and more than $1 million, a state conference record for a single cause.

"As some of the basic cleanup gets completed, more skilled people are needed, so this fall we'll try to send down more retired people with specific skills," Klason said. The church "intends to hang in there" for what it estimates will be an 8- to 11-year recovery, she said.