Four Hours to N.O

This month I made my first small group trip to New Orleans. I had gone last June with a large group of High School youth from the Houston area to assist Hurricane Katrina victims and discovered a city with 3 thirds of the population gone and as much of the housing uninhabitable. Our trip was so successful and the need so great that I made a commitment to return and try to organize regular work parties from Houston to New Orleans.

Accompanying me was my good friend Deborah, a long time member of our congregation at Bay Area Unitarian Universalist Church, and her son Skyler. Deborah is a real estate agent and in a former life did residential remodeling and construction. Skyler is a young man of 20 with an honest and amiable character. We met at the church at 5pm, loaded up my van and headed out I10 to Louisiana. Deborah is a person who doesn't like to remain inactive for long and she explained to me that lengthy car trips, or any long periods of idleness, tend to make her a little antsy. After 3 hours we stopped at the waffle house in Lafayette for dinner. I asked the waitress how long we had to travel to get to New Orleans and she said 4 hours. Sitting across the table from me Deborah eyes narrowed and Skyler smiled. "There is no way its 4 hours" I said to the woman who yelled to the fry cook "How long to New Orleans", "four hours" he said. We got out the map, confirmed the distance, and 2 and a half hours later pulled up to the First U.U. Church of New Orleans.

Friday morning we woke up at 6am to the smell of coffee and sausage. The second floor of the church had been converted into a volunteer center with a kitchen, dinning/planning room, and sleeping quarters. In the kitchen chopping apples and flipping sausage patties was another volunteer from Virginia. She introduced herself as Erika and offered me a cup of the strongest starbucks I had ever had. Erika told me that she was with a group of 24 from the UU Church of Arlington, VA. and that they had arrived on the 16th and were staying through the 23rd. I sat in the small dinning room and looked up at a 4' by 8' chalkboard that noted the various crews and many locations where they had worked over the past week. St. Bernard parish (ground zero), Gentilly, Seventh Ward, Ninth Ward, and Broadmore were some of the areas listed as well as organizations they had joined in service such as Habitat for Humanity, Common Ground, New Orleans Housing Services (NHS), and the Episcopal Diocese of Louisiana.

We were invited for breakfast and immediately after eating loaded our tools and drove to the Freret Street Community Center, a residence being converted by the NHS. Our Houston YRUU had originally removed all interior debris (mucked-out) and a large tree from the property during our trip this summer. Freret Street is in the Broadmore district where water levels after the levee broke were 2 to 5 feet. The interior had been painted and we had been assigned to get the windows stripped, primed, and panes replaced in preparation for final trim work. It took about 8 hours to complete this task then I drove Deborah and Skyler down St. Charles Avenue and through the garden district.

Later that evening we met some friends of hers she had assisted after the hurricane and they took us to dinner on Bourbon Street. Deb commented on how the city appeared to be thriving, people shopping, working, going to jazz clubs. Her friend John said that yes, the city has improved services somewhat and what we had seen, the French Quarter and the Garden District, were some of the few locations that were not heavily damaged by the storm. He said the current population was now estimated around 40 to 50% of the pre-Katrina census. We returned to the church and signed up to gut a house in the Gentilly district.

Driving from Broadmore to Gentilly on Saturday morning the city quickly changes from partially inhabited to almost completely abandoned. You watch as the water marks on building rise 4, 6, 8 feet to the eves of the houses and finally above the eve, marked by a 15 ft palm whose leaves are dead 10ft above the ground. We go to the home of a member of the first UU congregation the Arlington folks call Mister Bill. The day before, an Arlington crew had mucked-out the house removing all furniture, photo albums, dishes, beds, and clothing. The accumulations of forty years mister Bill had lived there were piled in the front yard. He is now eighty years old and is thankful that volunteers are providing this service because the average cost to gut a house is about 6000 dollars. Returned to him is a stamp collection and a few photos miraculously surviving with little damage, the rest will be sorted as chemically toxic, electrical, large appliance, general furniture and trash, then removed by the city.

There are 8 in our crew and we begin to haul out the first of 3 refrigerators that remain from the day before. We cannot take it out the door because it is to wide. If we remove the doors of the frig it will fit but for goodness sake the last thing you want to do is open a refrigerator that has been sealed for 12 months. Deb suggests we slide it over the sink and though the counter opening so we heave it up, and over, and out. We break out pry bars, shovels, wire cutters, hammers, and begin ripping out molding, light fixtures, dry wall, and door jams. Deborah efficiently removes ceiling fans and upper molding with a shovel while I get winded and take breaks every 30 minutes. Skyler does the work of 1 flabby engineer and 2 retirees taking breaks only every hour to hour and a half. In 6 hours Bills house of 40 years is a shell.

The way this works is the city will condemn a house if no effort is made to salvage the property. The moldy interior must be removed before they will inspect it. The inspection determines whether the property can be rebuilt and if you can qualify for some assistance. In Orleans parish alone 50,000 homes were severely damaged or destroyed by the storm and 30% of all housing damaged statewide. Houses gutted, numbering in the thousands, by faith based and secular groups are the primary method allowing people to recover severely damaged property. I made a quick survey of these organizations waiting list for gutting and estimate about 3000.

Sunday morning Deborah and Skyler take a tour of the ninth ward with their friend John while I load up the van. We met up at 10:30 across the street at the Presbyterian Church for Sunday service. The Presbyterian's have been gracious enough to allow the First UU congregation to hold services there as the UU sanctuary has been gutted. Reverend Michael McGee and the UU Church of Arlington provide the sermon complete with stories of their experiences that week. It is very moving and when the collection plate comes around it gets filled.

Driving home we stop again at the waffle house for a late lunch. A different waitress with a green name tag that says "Patty" hands us our menus and Deb leans over and ask her how long it takes to get to New Orleans. "Oh, about two hours" she says. We have a laugh and tell Patty about the other waitress saying it was 4 hours. She says "Well I know because I'm from St. Bernard Parish". It turns out that Patty and her father stayed in there home during the hurricane. ‘We sent my mom inland to stay with a friend and my dad and me boarded up the house. He works at the local hospital and had to stay and I wanted to stay with him'. When the eye of the storm passed over it brought an 18 foot storm surge with it. Patty and her dad ran to the second floor and when the water rose 2 foot into the second floor they climbed in the attic. Her home is now uninhabitable and they lost most of their belongings. I ask her if she intends to return and she tells me yes, her mom and dad are getting a new house in six months with the help of some organization called Habitat.