After reading trig palin’s post: My New Orleans, it was four years ago...... today, I thought I would give my account of Katrina 2005.
One year later, in October 2006, with a group of 11 people from my church - Christ Church on Quaker Hill - in Pawling, NY; I had the privilege of traveling to St. Bernard Parish outside New Orleans to aid in the relief efforts following Hurricane Katrina. We would be working with Habitat for Humanity, an organization known for building, not tearing down. Habitat had arrived just weeks after Katrina in October 2005 and set-up in the W. Smith Elementary School to stage their relief efforts and called it Camp Hope. Working with the U.S. government, AmeriCorps, organization; Habitat’s first mission was to help families gut their homes of all debris, so the homes could be inspected for safety and structure soundness.
AmeriCorps was the agency that was in charge of feeding us, providing a cot to sleep on and a very rustic make-shift bathroom, so we could shower. All of the supplies were donated by various corporations – food, water & equipment. While all the work was done by volunteers from around the world as far away as New Zealand & Iceland and in between; some were cooks, some were drivers, some were organizers.
St. Bernard was a community of about 79,000 people made up of neighborhoods with mostly ‘ranch style’ single family homes. The way the immediate destruction was explained to me – the water level was up to the ridge of the roof line of every home in Saint Bernard; with the contaminated water standing for over six weeks before receding out of the area.
The method Habitat used to clean up (or gut, as we called it) was teams of 10 to 12 people going out to homes in the area of St. Bernard Parish neighborhood by neighborhood. A bright yellow school bus would pick up the teams – we were Black 6 - and take us out to our assigned home. There we would gut the house completely down to cement slab & wooden studs.
Here let me tell you a little about Black 6… we were 11 friends from our church who wanted to go down and help in the relief effort. The youngest was 26 and the oldest was 80 – 7 women and 4 men, plus Mike from Habitat & Phil from AmeriCorps. That put our average age at 68½!
I remember that first day getting on the bus with excitement and anxiety - not really knowing what lay ahead. I was shocked by the destruction everywhere you looked. Shopping centers and whole neighbors, churches and gas stations – all empty; much like the old west ghost towns. Our first house was 3605 Dauterive Drive. Every possession that that family had worked for and cared about was now debris, which I moved to a front yard to be carried to a landfill. As I moved through the debris, you could smell the foul stench of rot.
The mission of the team was to make 5 piles in the front yard – one for junk (carpet, drywall), one for metal (any garage doors, appliances, curtain rods), one for old furniture (sofas, chairs, beds, china cabinets), one for toxic materials (paint, bleach, cleaning products) and the last one was possible keepsakes. A course the ‘keepsake’ pile was the smallest, but we were able to salvage a family picture, bible, china cup, a doll… but not much was worth saving. From start to finish, it would usually take us two days to completely gut the house.
After the water receded, the different government agencies when into all the homes, business, schools, churches… all structures to look for any possible dead… human or animal. Here is how they marked a structure after they had inspected it.
Looking at the mark (X) – the top of the X – date inspected, left side of X – any hazardous material, right side of X – mics notes (dead animals) and the bottom of the X – any deaths in house. Luckily where I was working no deaths, but in our travels I did see one mark with 9 deaths. That was down in the Ninth Ward were the breach started.
The craziest thing that happened on the first day and every week day after… the mailman can down the street delivering the mail. No one had lived in this area since Katrina, but Mr. Philpot (the mailman) delivered any mail addressed to that given home. “Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds.” - even after a catastrophic storm of total destruction. Unbelievable!
Oh, another thing happened – the temperature even in October was 90 degrees plus and the interior heat while wearing the required dress of long pants, long sleeve shirts, hard-hat, musk, gloves and heavy steel toed boots was over 100 degrees – during a break someone say they heard an ice cream truck… you know the music/bells they make… we all said you must be crazy… but we looked anyway and there driving down Dauterive Drive was an ice cream truck. Let me tell you, that ice cream never tasted better!
This is definitely an experience I will never forget and I hope that a catastrophic disaster like this never occurs again.
Be sure to read marytkelly's Humbled By A Katrina Victim. She tells of an incredible encounter while she was volunteering with The Red Cross in her hometown.
Also, read: Hurricane Katrina: After the Flood (pictures and memories) by mjwycha - awesome photographs!
TIP:
Enter the amount, and click "Tip" to submit!
Douglas Moran
Smithery
Patie
Love Grandma
Rolling
Alan Nothnagle
Salon.com
Comments
I can't imagine all the devastation after Katrina but, know what it is like after a tornado. It takes a lot of muscle and hard work and the help of good people like yourself!
Funny with the ice cream truck! Bet you made a beeline for that! Great, caring post and I enjoyed reading it.
Kudos to you, George!
http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2009/08/secret-history-hurricane-katrina
I have a deep admiration for you and your friends and the others who volunteered to help out. And I'm sure it is an experience you will never forget, and hope never to have to repeat.
ps--changed your avatar the same day I did. What a coincidence!
Rated.
Thanks Man
John… many thanks for you kind comments. You know this little church and most likely some of the great members.
Pam… Thanks - it was something else for sure.
JK… thanks, all of our group are truly amazing people. And I was proud to be down there with them.
Scanner… I did not, but we heard stories from locals about things like that. Many felt that some force was working against them and wanting to change the make-up of the race equation in New Orleans. The first major construction was the rebuilding of the $@) million Superdome… even before residents had proper housing.
fireeyes… many thanks – it was unbelievable
Stephen… Thanks. I know that each team member took away something that will stay with us forever.
zuma… thanks. It should be told and not forgotten. It is a blackeye on the workings of this country than hopefully taught lasting lessons.
You were there in spirit… it was the type disaster that just the good feelings & prayers from individuals like you were enough to get us through our experience and help the victims of Katrina & her aftermath. All the native New Orleans I met knew that the world was watching and concerned for their needs & safety.
I saw a report on CNN the other day that says that, although the failed levees have been rebuilt and should be able to withstand a 100-year storm, the other sections of the levee that survived Katrina have not been augmented. Now there's where some stimulus money might have come in handy.
For the life of me, I'm not sure why people want to live in a city that averages three feet below sea level. I guess if it's home...
Again thanks for your service and for sharing your story.
T_O_M…thanks. The area around New Orleans will take generations before it will be a community again. Pockets of completion are making progress, but some areas are near the same, 4 years after the flood. Your daughter should be commended for sticking with the necessary work needed to bring life again to a great city.
thanks for this report