A Week In The Katrina Aftermath

(From the Milton Courier, May 2006)


With apologies to Charles Dickens, it was the best of times; it was the worst of times.

There may be no better way to describe my experience as one of a team of 15 from Milton Seventh Day Baptist Church that traveled to suburban New Orleans as part of a disaster relief effort doing cleanup from Hurricane Katrina.

The week we spent in Chalmette, Louisiana was truly dichotomous in terms of the highs and lows we felt, the good and bad we saw. It was people who lost everything; it was people who gained perspective by helping. It was hard physical labor; it was less stress than a typical workweek. It was government in action; it was government inaction. It was intense happiness from bonding within the team; it was intense sadness and empathy for the residents. It was horrible devastation; it was hope for the future.

Eight months after Katrina struck, the New Orleans area is still a mess. It looks more like war-torn Baghdad than America. Entire residential neighborhoods sit abandoned, save for some trailers provided by FEMA that serve as temporary residences. Katrina didn’t discriminate; the smallest homes and the ritziest all bore the spray-painted marks of inspection teams searching their devastated interiors for bodies. Most businesses in Chalmette were still closed as well. Only a handful had re-opened, the majority of those within the last month.

When we entered the city in our van, we must have looked comical to passersby as we first witnessed the devastation in person, eyes as wide as silver dollars and mouths agape. It was Election Day in New Orleans, which made for some strange juxtaposition. At intersections where the stoplights still were not functional, residents handed out campaign literature amidst an ocean of campaign signs as thick as the debris piles that lined the streets.

We had one day to get acclimated prior to beginning our work. We spent that day touring the city. As one member of our group astutely put it, the first day we were shocked by the devastation; the second day, we were shocked by its magnitude. We drove for miles and miles, and the sights never changed. The same abandoned homes, boarded up businesses, decimated lawns. Very little besides the French Quarter, with a jazz and blues festival in full swing, seemed truly alive and unscathed by Katrina’s wrath.

There are about 27,000 homes in St. Bernard Parish, the county in which Chalmette sits. Of that number, only three were habitable after Katrina. The parish was under water for two weeks, in some cases up to 28 feet. About 85% of these people did not have flood insurance -- most were told they didn’t need it -- and so their homes continue to sit waterlogged, moldy and caked with mud.

Our group spent the week working on some of these houses, turning their insides into skeletal shells. Basically, our job was to remove everything inside – furniture, possessions, appliances, carpeting, mud, etc. – and then remove the drywall and ceilings, exposing all of the studs so that they could be treated for mold.

The physical work was a big adjustment for a group not used to heat and humidity and whose regular employment is generally non-manual labor. It could also be very emotional, tossing someone’s personal possessions onto a debris pile in front of their house. My personal low point was throwing out a destroyed school assignment called “The Day My Puppy Died” written by a little boy.

The week was full of little moments, snapshots that will stay in our collective memories. The hole in the roof of the first house we gutted, where the resident and his son – trapped in the attic by the flood – had to break out to be rescued. The house ripped intact from its foundation and deposited in the street four blocks away. The strangers who stopped to thank us for coming to help. The people we met from the other groups at our camp, volunteers from all over the nation, all with a similar purpose. Cody, the little boy living in a trailer next door, who visited us during our breaks and became our buddy, helping us cool off with freezer pops. The chicken that kept us company in the yard of the second house we worked on. The dead alligator in the debris pile next door to our work site. The neighbor Buddy, a true character who quoted lines from the movie “Blazing Saddles” and was kind enough to let us use the shade of his carport and his functioning restroom. Benny, the 80-year-old who received $4,100 from the insurance company to cover $65,000 worth of losses, but found some comfort in discovering one of his school yearbooks undamaged. Tom, a 76-year-old on a salvaged bicycle, who found his current predicament preferable to being “naked and crying” at birth. The laughs we shared. The tears we shared. The sense of accomplishment we shared.

In the end, the experience was extremely fulfilling. We left knowing that we had helped people who desperately needed help. And a true bond formed among the fifteen of us. It was very special, even though it took place in some of the worst circumstances imaginable in this country.

The question now is: what do we do with this experience? Our group discussed finding ways to bring relief to those affected by local “hurricanes,” minor in scope to Katrina but just as devastating to the people involved. We have already begun to put that resolve into action.

But the idea needs to go far beyond our group or our church. Even though we look at it as “showing God’s love in a practical way,” it’s not just a Baptist thing or a Christian thing. It’s something we all need to embrace -- volunteering your time, talents and efforts to help those around us suffering from their own disasters.

It’s about taking the worst of times, and transforming them into the best of times, for the betterment of all of us.