Acorn

Issue date: 3/28/06 Section: Opinions

Think about your house and everything inside that makes it your home. There�s appliances, furniture, clothing, books. There are gifts from loved ones, souvenirs from vacations, mementos from your childhood, photographs worth 1,000 words.

It�s Aug. 25, 2005 and Hurricane Katrina�s 145-mph winds are heading straight for you. You have one day to pack anything you can into one car because your city, New Orleans, is being evacuated. After driving hours and hours to reach safety, you watch television as the levees break, spilling Lake Pontchartrain into 80 percent of the city. It takes three weeks for the 15-foot storm surge to recede from some areas.

When you return home, you don�t know what to expect, other than what you�ve seen of your neighborhood on CNN � and it�s bad. What you come back to is not your house.

�Y�all tell everybody at home that it�s not OK down here,� said Kenny, a Chalmette, La. resident. �People�s lives are ruined. They�re still pulling bodies out of these houses.�

I spent my spring break with 19 Drewids in Slidell, La., working with the local Habitat for Humanity chapter. None of us really knew what to expect � we just wanted to help.

The message we came back with: New Orleans is not OK. You can�t say it in words. You can�t convey it in a picture. You have to see it and feel it for yourself.

We spent one day mucking (or gutting) a house in Chalmette. It was one of the hardest-hit areas, located 6 miles southeast of New Orleans. Six months after Katrina, it is a ghost town. Blocks and blocks of the destroyed houses stand cold and lonely like grave stones.

A Slidell Habitat for Humanity volunteer guided us through the neighborhood, stopping at areas with the worst damage. On one street, five houses were ripped from their foundations by Katrina�s winds and carried by the 20-foot storm surge to the opposite side of a riverbank.

The houses crashed into a brick apartment complex, many of them landing on cars. Their windows were shattered and the doors propped open, revealing their disheveled kitchens and living rooms, shook up like a backgammon dice by Katrina.

As I walked among the wreckage, my legs and fingers stiffened and had a strange sensation in them. Sophomore Cristal Reyes told me I had to write about Chalmette in The Acorn when we returned, that other college students need to see what we experienced.

Along the streets lie rows and rows of debris. The giant piles break your heart, packed with the unsalvageable contents of the destroyed houses.

The Drew group mucked the Folse residence. Before we could enter the mold-covered house, we had to don masks, white hazmat suits and gloves � it was 85 degrees outside, and not a person left the home without sweating through everything they wore. We were given crowbars, hammers and shovels, and were told to �have fun� by the Habitat volunteer. When we entered the house, it was impossible to know where to start. People quickly toured the house, deciding how they would make themselves useful.

I worked alongside freshman Cortney Conrad in their bedroom. The floor was a tapestry of mementos and clothing, everything covered by a scrim of dried mud. Every time we found something decipherable, we asked each other whether it was worth saving � a gold ring, brooch, calendar, dolls. Even though we didn�t meet the 80-year-old homeowners, every student in the group knows more about them than we�d care to.

The Folses liked to read. They had many astronomy, nature and travel books. They also kept old Disney movies they once showed their children. The Folses loved to travel. They have more photos and slides than I have ever seen. One of their favorite vacations was to Alaska. The group was asked to find a polar bear paperweight as they sifted through the family�s personal belongings. No one did � but I did find a ruler with Alaska pictures on it.

Mrs. Folse kept everything, from Post-it notes reading �Mom, I�m going to Sharon�s house for dinner,� to a daily schedule book noting when she woke up and where she went each day. She had canvas calendars from 1973. She also collected small dolls and Mardi Gras coins. She wore Chanel makeup and perfume.

Students knocked down kitchen cabinets and removed everything, including the kitchen sink. A few unlucky students carried out the refrigerator, still closed, which was full of the six-month-old food and water. As they moved it, the water � and the stink � flooded out.

Other students used hammers to tear down the moldy wood paneling and sheetrock, as the cement broke into powdery dust. We carried out the debris by the wheelbarrow.

Mucking the house was one of the most emotionally challenging things I�ve ever done. You have to focus on your task to get through it � you couldn�t think of the big picture and what needed to get done. I kept thinking �You can do it, just clean up this floor.� With the smell, heat and hard labor, it was nearly impossible to work more than 30 minutes without a water break.

By the end of the day, most of the mucking was done. All that remained was the frame. The Folse and their neighbors wait for FEMA instruction to see whether or not they can rebuild or if their land will be bulldozed.

Not all of New Orleans was this bad, though.

Our first inkling of Katrina stretched along the highway from Mississippi to Louisiana. The trees along Interstate 59 looked like broken matchsticks.

The devastation in Pearl River, a section of Slidell, is subtle. The town is located in St. Tammany Parish, located on the north shore of Lake Pontchartrain, 45 minutes northeast of New Orleans. As we drove to our makeshift residence, the Pearl River United Methodist Church, it appeared that the area is bouncing back. There is lots of construction. About half the businesses in the area were open � gas stations and restaurants with spray-painted signs proclaimed, �We�re coming back soon.� There are construction signs plastered everywhere � �roofing,� �house gutting� and �car towing.�

However, as we approached Rat�s Nest Road, which is on Lake Pontchartrain, the vans fell silent save for the occasional gasp.

The first floors of all the buildings along the road were completely washed away by the flood waters. A small bridge brings you to a small peninsula, which juts out onto the lake. All the houses there are built on 12-foot stilts. Most of the houses� roofs were caved in or covered with blue tarp.

FEMA symbols, which represent the number of victims found and the date the house had been inspected, were spray-painted on all the houses left standing. Many of the houses were simply gone. There was debris everywhere � wood, furniture, toys, and clothing hanging in trees. Families were clearing out their former homes, and some were working to repair them. A man was bulldozing his small home. Someone spray-painted �For sale, half off� on one of the wrecked homes.

Before Katrina, the Slidell chapter of Habitat for Humanity built about four houses per year. After Katrina, their goal is to complete 100 homes in an 18-month period. The manpower to build these houses is provided by people from all over the country. A group of 10 high school students from Alaska cleared trees from a 3-acre lot. Ten students from SUNY-Buffalo spent the week mucking five houses in Chalmette, La. A group of 25 senior citizens who have two things in common, they own RVs and commit their lives to missionary work, labored on a different house.

From Monday to Thursday, we Drewids spent our time at two different Habitat worksites. The group at the first site put up siding, built a shed and put on the finishing touches to the exterior of a house. The second group lifted the framing and roof beams of a house.

If you�ve never worked with Habitat for Humanity � you should. Even though it feels like you are doing insignificant work, like hammering siding, you�re making a big difference in someone�s life. Likewise, if you haven�t donated money or supplies to the Gulf coast, or even if you have, the people still need your help.

I can�t explain what working in Louisiana meant to me. I am sure, however, that the experience changed me more than I helped Louisiana.

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