Happy Mardi Gras

Today was refreshing. I got away from Camp Premier for a while and helped set up a soup-kitchen just down the road. Fourteen other volunteers and myself setup 500 chairs for the residents of this parish in the gymnasium of an elementary school. The needs of the parish are about 1000 meals/day for the residents who still don't have transportation to get around to get food, not that there are really any markets open in this area. I heard today that as of last month, only 1% of the electricity had been restored here. That really makes it hard to make progress restoring this community.

This is as close to a modern ghost-town as I will ever see, in America.

This afternoon, as we were unloading an enormous order of tools from Lowe's hardware at another gym we use as a warehouse, we ran across a group of families who were taking advantage of the park that Extreme Makeover restored for the community. It was great to see these families who are recently reconnected. All were from here, but they've been living in locally and in Texas and Baton Rouge and were enjoying the day off together. They even helped us unload our trailers, to thank us for our work in the parish. As I was leaving, I ran into Eva who talked to me for a few minutes. She told me she and her husband were working hard to reopen their diner, and that's why he wasn't at the park with her and her three children.

I wish I wrote well, because I cannot describe the sincerity and gratitude with which these people welcome us. It is that single act of kindness from them that makes this worthwhile. I cannot wait to go to the Gold Star Diner when it reopens.

Finally

It's not a question that I wish to debate, nor do I have strong feelings one way or the other. I understand the economic need for a Mardi Gras celebration and the message it sends about the area. But heck, I'm documenting that not seven miles from the French Quarter and not even four miles from the Ninth Ward, is a community that still lies devastated from the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. And exactly what message should be sent? Anyway, ABC News has a story New Orleans' Party is On -- But Should it Be? that echoes sentiments I've heard. To be fair, I've heard both sides of the debate from the locals as well.

100 Houses Completed

It has been another amazing week in St. Bernard Parish. We completed the 100th house on Friday, so yet another milestone has been realized. And with the number of volunteers ready to shoot past 1,000, we are moving on toward the goal of gutting 5,000 houses by June.

When I left my job to come do this, I was hoping for two things: to help people that need it, and to meet people willing to do the same thing. I've been fortunate in that I'm not 1/3 into the year, and I've accomplished both goals. For example, this week we met another one of the families we came to help. Marion and Pete Oldenburg, and their daughter Karen came to their house on our last day there. They spent most of the day with us, and what an emotional day it was. Marion asked me not to take any photographs of her debris (the debris photo shown here is not from Marion's house), but she did allow me to photograph her and her daughter with our team. She was so thankful to us, but I have to admit that I feel as though I am in her debt for allowing me to experience this.

This is simply the most rewarding experience of my life.

I mentioned my other goal was to meet people willing to help others. Well, I've done that. I did it in Kauai, Baton Rouge and at Camp Premier. I was nervous after we had such a good group last week, that we could never be so lucky again. How wrong I was. Katie, Tom, Patty, John, Don, Eddie, Will, Lynda, Aaron and Crystal are as amazing a group as I've ever met, and I think we're now family. Once again, I feel I'm in their debt for allowing me to know them. There is a downside to meeting people this wonderful, it is that you eventually have to say goodbye.



The camp continues to grow, and the faces continue to change, but the mission remains the same. As well as the rewards.

Meet the Gauthier's

Our new group finished our first house on Tuesday. Before we left, the home-owners stopped by to inspect our work. They were so thankful, but we're pretty certain it was our privilege to help them. One of our members was thoughtful and saved a large number of letters between the two, I believe from when he was abroad, as he is a Korean War Veteran. Anyway, it was nice to have met them.

We've since moved on to a new house that's taking more time than we anticipated. Some of it is due to heat, and some is because of new logistical challenges. What was three volunteer teams last week has grown to seventeen this week (somewhere around 380 volunteers). In weeks to come, we hear of numbers as large as 2,000 volunteers. The upside here, of course, is that help is finally coming.

The "Big Board" this afternoon showed that the Recovery Project has completed 69 houses. Only 9,931-ish to go...

A Few Quick Notes

Pardon the lack of formatting and photographs, it's much easier to update this on the weekend when I have a bit more time.

As I learn more about it I will update the blog, but Extreme Makeover Home Edition came to Chalmette (the Parish seat of St. Bernard) yesterday where they announced they are rebuilding a church in the area. This morning, several people with shirts with the aforementioned name on it could be seen at breakfast.

This brings up another point, there are several volunteer groups here other than Habitat. Among those represented are AmeriCorps NCCC, Samaritan's Purse, and PRC Compassion. The point being that you don't have to be with Habitat to be here.

The final thing is that one of the new couples that joined us today is celebrating there 18th wedding anniversary, today. How cute is that?

A Day of Destruction

Every Saturday, the camp provides a tour of St. Bernard. The tour is an excellent introduction not only to the devastation and chronology of Hurricane Katrina, but also to the history and legacy of this parish. Of course we were allowed to see scenes of destruction such as the ones on this page. Shown here are a shrimp boat that found its way into a neighborhood, the water/oil line on a house neighboring the Murphy oil spill and another resident's opinion of the spill, and finally a house that 'just appeared' in the neighborhood.

The Murphy oil spill was approximately 1,000,000 gallons of mixed crude oil. We learned that Murphy is paying residents anywhere from $7-$12/sq. ft. if they have oil damage, as long as they agree not to sue or anything. For a large house, that's almost $20,000!!! There's a bit more about the oil spill at the EPA's web site.




What we also learned was that the flooding here could have been avoided, and was introduced, of course as all good things are, by man. Enter the Mississippi River Gulf Outlet (MRGO). MRGO is a man-made channel that provides ready access to the Gulf of Mexico. In doing so, it provides a bypass for the gulf waters that avoids the natural wetlands of southern Louisiana. The surge of water that flooded this entire parish in large part came from the MRGO. One interesting thing to note is that what it took nature about 4,500 years to build, the wetlands in St. Bernard, it took MRGO less than 100 to destroy.

A large part of this community campaigns against MRGO. You can read and see more at www.paceonline.org. PACE is the acronym for Parishes Against Coastal Erosion. For more about the storm and St. Bernard Parish, see this entry at wikipedia.

One Week Down

I've been trying to think of words, or just one word to best describe what I'm a part of here. The best I can do is 'epic'. I think it sums up the devastation of this parish and the work ahead of them. I've not been able to find the words to sum up this experience, which is why I mostly relay facts as I obtain them.

One of the most impressive things I've found since being here is that everyone, not just some, but everyone you meet from St. Bernard Parish has a story. Everyone here was affected, everyone you meet suffered damage or loss, either personal or property. Given that we're working closely with the St. Bernard Fire Department, I've heard some of their personal stories of survival as well as those of their rescues. I've helped 'gut' the house of one of the 34 who died at St. Rita's Nursing Home. I've personally disposed of pets that were left behind (at what became known to us as the Two Dead Dog House).

Nothing in life has prepared me for what I've witnessed, but then again, I think nothing in life could have prepared these 73,000 residents for what they have experienced.

I've been remiss in not commenting on the SBFD before now, but Chiefs Caluda and Lea have gone out of their way to orchestrate our logistics. We have been so fortunate to have worked with firefighters like Armand, Rick and Andrew who have made us feel so welcome and appreciated for what feels to us like such a small effort in the big picture. The people of this parish are so very well cared for and represented by these fine gentlemen. Before Katrina, St. Bernard parish had about 116 firefighters. After the storm, 94 dedicated souls remained.












Finally, I have a few photos to share. Among these are before and after photos of houses we've gutted, one where we called in assistance from the fire department to help wash away some of the Katrina smell, my little smoking place at Camp Premier and what's left of my team on our last day this week. In all, we cleaned up almost five houses in five days. We still have an hour or so on our last house which we'll pick up on Monday. This time "we" will be a few holdovers from this week's team and some new faces we'll probably meet sometime Sunday. Things will begin to change here next week: over the weekend we expect to get between 250-300 new volunteers. What was once one bus will become six buses of volunteers. We hope to go from 15 houses a week to 90. Still, it will be a small dent in the 5,000 by June, but it is something. And it feels important. Probably because it is.



[2006/02/18 19:00 CST edit: correct spelling of SBFD Chief's name]

A Few More Facts about St. Bernard Parish

Camp Premier is a federal camp. FEMA is providing this space for the displaced residents, contractors and volunteers. Soon, a new facility, Camp Hope, will open next door and that will provide all the volunteer housing. I believe there will soon be a third so that residents, contractors and volunteers will at separate facilities.

I mentioned before the extent of the damage to this Parish. Remember, I'm pretty low on the totem poll, and all my facts may not be correct, but I gleaned today that there are around 10,000 households in St. Bernard that have signed up for the house-gutting we are doing. I think we're on about the 50th house, or something like that. I've heard that one goal is to have completed about 6 or 7 thousand houses by June. Given that it took us until the end of this second day to finish Joyce's house - I believe that more volunteers are needed.

Another interesting item that I heard was how this entire operation is organized. Although I've been working for a Habitat affiliate, I'm just volunteering my time, like the volunteers that work with me. (In fact, I'm pretty happy that my affiliate gave me time off to do this without giving me too hard of a time.) You may have read about some of the contracting and sub-contracting that FEMA has been doing over the past months (see one story at The Times-Picayune.) St. Bernard Parish with their diminished tax-base, has arranged with FEMA to be paid for each volunteer hour the Parish can provide. According to my sources this is in the neighborhood of $50/hour. The New Orleans Habitat affiliate is helping recruit volunteers to come here not only to perform some valuable service, but also this is helping with some needed revenue as there is no layering (as is the case with the contracting and sub-contracting going on in this region). If this is all true, I'm pretty happy that my tax dollars are being spent to repair something here, help build this community back and it's not just going into someone's profit margins.

Welcome to Camp Premier

I was actually feeling sorry for myself yesterday. There are probably a few reasons for it - that I won't go into, but I decided to buy a bunch of country music cds and listen to them on my way to New Orleans, rather, St. Bernard Parish to work with the recovery project. I was so into my own woes, that I really wasn't even thinking what the heck I was coming to do. blah, blah, blah.

Anyway (have you figured out one of the reasons for the title of this blog yet?), I arrived at Camp Premier at about 4:00 p.m. Camp Premiere is home for about 1500 people, including volunteers, contractors and displaced residents from this Parish. As I was led through the tent housing the single-male Parish residents, I found I had forgotten a few of my troubles. Man, this place makes your heart bleed gallons. Men, women, children and families with no where else to go have made this place their home.

We have regular meals, laundry services, showers and a warm place to sleep. Well, it was warm until our electricity went out this morning around 2:00 a.m. Thank goodness I bought a sleeping bag good down to 15 F. In fact, I'm heading off shortly for chow. The food is not nearly as extravagant as the meals FEMA had set up for their temporary shelter in Baton Rouge, but it's good and we won't go hungry.

This morning, my work crew of twelve volunteers got on the bus and went to our supply facility to get our Tyvek® suits, goggles and an N-95 mask. The other volunteers spent four hours yesterday being trained to know what an N-95 mask is, to be safe, informed how we shouldn't worry about the environmental hazards from sediments, watch out for snakes and spiders and try not to hurt yourself or your fellow volunteers. I, however, missed this training as I arrived late. I did get to watch a four hour DVD presentation of the same.

Some interesting things of note I learned from the DVD was the scope of the damage in this Parish. This is the only Parish that was completely decimated by Katrina. What I mean by that is, the entire Parish was flooded. There was no dry land at all. Of the 69,000 residents and 25,000 households, there were 128 casualties and only 3 houses were undamaged. Only 11 houses were habitable after hurricane Katrina. There were only 7,000 houses that had flood insurance. Why, because although this Parish is surrounded by water, they are 0.5 ft above sea level. Flood insurance wasn't required. Post-flood, they had no infrastructure and no tax-base from which to attempt to recover. I think I'm at a place where people need help.

Today, on our way to the site, you could clearly see the water lines on the houses. Within minutes after the storm, the houses were standing in 6-ft of water. Boats, shacks and houses litter the neighborhoods, still.

We're working for the Parish as they try to reclaim some of their neighborhoods. Today, we began gutting 1900 Schnell. Joyce is the house's owner, and she lives outside of what was her home in a 27-foot trailer. She watched as we carried every load to the curb and made comments about when she purchased a certain painting, how long she's had that desk and if we had found any of her ceramic angels. We found a few, and returned them to her. Some just weren't salvageable.

Do you want to know something? Do not open a refrigerator if it's been without electricity for four or five months. Yours truly clearly isn't as bright as he sometimes thinks he is. I was just trying to get a better grip. I promise.

I hope to have some photos later this week. I've been kind of overwhelmed and haven't even thought to pull my camera out. I wanted to at least just share what I could now.

[ 2006/02/13 19:35 CST edit - corrected spelling of camp]

A Little Background

There was no construction this weekend. The Habitat BR staff and board instead participated in a two-day retreat designed to plan the upcoming build year and maybe provide a bit of motivation. Two things came out of this that I thought I would share:
1) This organization has sustained a production growth rate (number of houses) of about 14% for the past decade.
2) In one month this affiliate will begin its efforts to double current production for the year - a production growth rate of about 100% (40 houses, 20 this spring).

This affiliate has a lot working for it. It has a strong presence in its community, support of Habitat International and some good people behind it. It has a record of meeting its goals.

But, can you believe that kind of rate increase?? Just look at it:

Anyway, it all starts March 11 and leads up to a glorious 14 house blitz at the end of May. Please keep your fingers crossed.

My last bit of news is that this Sunday, I'm heading off to work at the St. Bernard Recovery Project.
I'm still not certain if I'm staying one week or two, but this should be quite an experience. This isn't strictly Habitat, instead Habitat is providing volunteers to work with St. Bernard Parish and FEMA to determine which, if any, houses can be salvaged. Mostly, I believe we're expecting to tear down quite a few houses. There will be very little construction in the near term. I believe these guys need help, if anyone desires to do so. Hopefully, I'll have access to the Internet there, and will update the site next week.