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]