Well, here I go on another mission trip. I'm going with people from Cornerstone, my campus church, but this year, we're joining a group from Omaha, associated with the campus ministry at the University of Nebraska - Omaha. There are four* of us from Lincoln; together with the Omaha people, we form a healthy group of 13. We'll be going to Pascagoula, MI to spend the week gutting and rebuilding flood-damaged houses. Armed with a laptop and wireless Internet access, I'll be recording what thoughts I can on this page as the week progresses.
We started out this morning at 8:00am, at which point we rented our vans, loaded our luggage, gathered together, and hit the road. Though this was the beginning of the trip for us as a group, those of us from Lincoln made our way to Omaha the night before. One of us lives in Omaha and was gracious enough to let us stay at her house.
This first day of our journey was uneventful for the most part. We spend most of the day driving along while I passed the time mostly in conversation with a good friend of mine, another of the four* from Lincoln and a fellow computer engineer. Around 10:00pm, we arrived at a church in Memphis, Tennessee which had agreed to house us overnight.
After we arrived, a few of us played some basketball, which is something I don't do often. I'm sure the exercise did me some good; the interaction with the others on the trip certainly did. Following that, we discussed our options for tomorrow's breakfast (we opted to leave right away and eat on the road), and we split into small groups to discuss our preconceptions about the trip. After discussing the questions we'd been given, my group had a nice informal discussion. I really enjoyed the chance to get to know a couple of those on the trip that I'd never met before. One part of the discussion sticks out particularly: One member of my group said that she was surprised at how friendly the group was when we first met. Apparently, she's not used to people she hasn't met spontaneously waving at her. After our discussion, we all got together to close with a prayer. The leader of the group asked us to contribute to the prayer as we felt lead, but nobody got up the courage, resulting in an awkward silence in the middle of the prayer. Oh well, I'm sure we'll get over our shyness in good time. After that, I showered and sat down to write this narrative before bed. We have about six hours of driving ahead of us tomorrow; I suppose it's about time for me to get some sleep.
As planned, we left this morning around 8:00am. We had planned to stop at a Waffle House for breakfast, but failing to find one of those (hard to believe, I know), we ended up eating at a "Huddle House," which appeared similar. There, I had grits for the second time in my life; it's always good to experience new, or at least unfamiliar, things.
Before we arrived at Pascagoula, we took a small trip through Biloxi, which was also hit hard by the hurricane. I had been seeing some damage since we went through Hattiesburg, which surprised me once I looked at a map and saw how far inland it was. Biloxi, then, has a lot of damage left. When we drove through, I saw hotels missing the first floor or two, a collapsed walkway between buildings, and chunks missing from the outer covering of many buildings. Apparently, last December there was a large floating casino that had been washed far inland, but it's been dismantled since then. That reminds me, the other striking sight in Biloxi was the debris I saw collected on one or two blocks. All in all, I could look at the scene and believe that the hurricane hit weeks ago, rather than months. I can only speculate as to how it looked mere weeks after the disaster.
We finally arrived in Pascagoula around 4:30pm. After discerning that food would be prepared for us at 6:00pm, we decided to go for a walk to the ocean and back. The church we're staying at is only about 3/4 of a mile from the ocean, so this was quite manageable. Along the way, I saw a number of concrete slabs or empty lots where houses used to be, as well as many visibly damaged houses - one was reduced to little more than its wooden frame. There were houses that looked fine, but those that didn't have significant hidden flood damage were probably built, or remodeled by volunteers like us, since Katrina hit. There is still some activity in Pascagoula, but since I wasn't here before, I don't really have a basis for comparison. I'm sure there's less activity than there used to be.
I knew this church would be housing a lot of other groups, but I found out at supper that there are about 120 volunteers staying here in all. Many more are volunteering through the same organization but staying elsewhere. Not too long after we ate, we got our work assignments. I'll be replacing ceilings with one half of our group; the other half will be roofing. After we got that sorted out, we were pretty much free for the rest of the night. I'll need to get to bed a little earlier tonight; tomorrow will start earlier for us than the last two days.
I got up this morning at 6:30am, so I had time to get up and eat the breakfast provided (like all our meals while we're here) by the church where we're staying. After that, we left for the house we'd spend the day working at. Even the directions there were affected by the hurricane: ". . . well, it used to be the third house on the right, but now it's the first."
It was a one-story house, one of those that looked fine on the outside but had sustained significant damage inside. The walls had already had their Sheetrock replaced, and much of the ceiling Sheetrock had also been removed. Our task was to tear out the rest of the ceiling, along with all the electrical wires above it. After a full day of work, punctuated by a trip back to the church for lunch, we got everything done and swept the place out. It was a good bit of business. Needless to say, we were spent when we got back around 5:30pm. We were also excited for our 6:00 supper and the opportunity to take a shower (which a couple of us did immediately after eating). I got some writing in before taking mine, but when I did, I was thrilled to get the Sheetrock dust and assorted filth off of myself.
Right after we arrived at the house this morning, the owner's son-in-law came, gave us some details on what needed to be done, and told us the story of what happened in that house when Katrina hit. At the time, his father- and mother-in-law were eating breakfast and going about their usual business. The house was built higher than any hurricane in memory had reached, so they were sure that they were in no danger. Then, water started coming into the house. They tried to go to their cars in the attached garage, but by the time they got there, the garage was so full of water that the cars were moving around with the currents. The water came up to somewhere between 5 and 6 feet, and they rushed into the crawlspace above their garage, where they waited out the storm. It was a very small space, as I saw when I removed the Sheetrock below it. Besides that, the cars crashed against the walls while they hid up there, threatening to bring the whole structure down with them. The father-in-law went back down by way of a refrigerator twice during the storm, once for the cat and once for his wife's jewelry. The second time, he nearly didn't make it back up. Still, they did survive the experience. That reminds me, most of the people of Pascagoula were fortunate in that respect: I heard yesterday that there was only one fatality in the city as a result of Hurricane Katrina.
On that note, I looked up the population of Pascagoula as we were driving, and I found it's about 26,000, not too much larger than my native Brookings. Thanks to that correlation, I feel a special connection to Pascagoula. Though I really don't know what the this city was like before the hurricane blew through, I can at least imagine some commonalities with my hometown.
There was talk that we would Sheetrock a house today, but apparently it won't be ready for that until this afternoon. So, this morning we went back to the same house we worked on yesterday and removed the ductwork. It seems we were supposed to spend all morning on that, but we were done in little more than an hour. I guess we're just that fast. We returned to the church to see if we could find some other work to do until noon, and I got a start on today's journal. One of us had a talk with one of the guys who's coordinating things around here, and just as he was calling people to try to find us a place to work, a little old lady came in, saying she needed work done on her house. So, before long we followed her to her house.
The first thing that struck me when I walked into this lady's house was that it was still full of her things - pictures, appliances, furniture, and such. I thought, "Well, if we have to replace the walls in here, the first order of business will be to clear out the stuff, and that will be quite a task." Instead of doing any work, though, we spent almost an hour talking to the owner, as she was trying to determine how much really needed to be done. This house hadn't been hit as hard as many others - the water hadn't gotten higher than two or three feet, and the lights still worked (though we did notice one flicker while we were there). The damage to the walls wasn't too bad, and in the one place where she'd removed the interior paneling, there was no visible mold. She didn't want to replace the walls if it wasn't absolutely necessary, particularly since she'd lived in that house since it was built about 50 years ago, and most of the interior walls were covered with a type of wood paneling that isn't in production anymore, so if any of it needed to be replaced, all of it would need to be replaced. (Actually, that paneling was familiar to me - there's some of it in my house.) Basically, she needed somebody who could give her an expert opinion on what needed to be replaced. Of course, none of us could.
Finally, since there was nothing we could help her with, we came back to the church with her, and she talked with one of the coordinators. He said that he could get a roofing team to her house within the week and an interior team by next Monday or so. She was quite unhappy that nothing could be done sooner than that: she was "back where [she] started." Apparently there are so many people waiting for help that it is often two to three weeks from the time a person asks for help to the time they get it. After she left, a teammate discussed his perspective with the coordinator, and it sort of surprised me. He said something to the effect that she came to the church eager to have her house fixed, but once we came to her house, she got cold feet and tried to find reasons why we shouldn't have to fix it, but then after she came back here, she wanted the work done again. I just hadn't thought about it like that, and I'm not sure whether I should have or not.
Anyway, that whole episode only took about an hour, so we still had the problem of finding something to do. The coordinator solved our problem, at least temporarily, by having us clean the bathrooms. Though he told us not to feel demeaned by the task, I'm sure most of us were. For my part, I decided that despite the fact that it isn't what we came here to do, it did need to be done, and it does help the process at least somewhat. They were in sore need of cleaning; I'll be glad to have a clean bathroom to use. After we finished that task, I hooked my laptop up again until lunch.
We had work lined up for the afternoon. The owner of the house we were to work on was a bit late, but he did show up to take us to his house. His possessions were also set up around the house, but fortunately we only had to work on one room. The room, in the back of the house, wasn't very large - maybe eight feet square or so. The water hadn't gotten very high at all, but it had come in from the ceiling, ruining the walls on its way down. We had to buy some things to get started, but by 2:00pm or so we sealed off the only doorway into the room with plastic and duct tape, opened the window, and started work. Half of us worked in the room, taking the Sheetrock off of the walls and throwing the waste pieces out of the window onto the waiting tarp, which the other half of us took to the curb periodically to dump the trash. After finishing most of the walls, we got the owner's OK to take the ceiling as well, and we started on that. Much of the insulation basically disintegrated after coming out of the ceiling, leaving particulate in the air that had me coughing despite my dust mask after I'd removed just a corner of the ceiling. At that point, I decided to take a break and switch with someone outside. By the time half of the ceiling was down, the people inside could hardly see, and as the insulation was thrown out onto the tarp, those of us outside found ourselves going around the side of the house to avoid the dust. Still, we did get the whole ceiling down and all of that horrible insulation thrown by the side of the road (and covered with some plastic to keep it there). We even had time to measure for new insulation before we left. Since the wall studs didn't appear to have a mold problem, there's a good chance we could start putting insulation in and Sheetrock back on the walls in that room tomorrow.
I have neglected to mention it so far, but I hadn't thought of Katrina's effects on the church we'd be staying at. When I arrived, then, I saw the bare concrete floors, half-finished wiring, and newly-installed Sheetrock and gained a new appreciation for the fact that in this area, no place was safe from the hurricane. Even as we stay here and work to fix houses in Pascagoula, there are still volunteers working on the church itself, mostly finishing the wiring at this point. The church building itself is a constant reminder of the half-finished state of this city.
This may well be our last day to work, because we're leaving for Omaha on Friday, and we're talking about taking a side trip to New Orleans tomorrow. I hope we get some chance to work more before we leave; with only three days to work (and half of a day wasted waiting for work), I really don't feel like I've done enough. Actually, upon further consultation with the guy in charge of the trip (who my friend insists on calling "Our Fearless Leader"), I found that we should be able to get some work in tomorrow. That makes me feel better.
We did have a productive day today. After picking up materials, we got to the house (the same one we worked on yesterday) around 9:00am and started replacing the Sheetrock. By noon we had most of the ceiling in, and by about 5:00pm, we had finished the whole room. All that's left now is to fill in the cracks and screw heads. Perhaps we'll get to do that; I'm not sure exactly what work we'll be doing tomorrow. In case we wouldn't be back tomorrow, the owner of the house asked us for our names and addresses so he could get in touch with us later.
I managed to get hold of a picture that one of the other members of my group took. Here it is, but if you're on a slow connection, beware: It's a big file (about 1MB).
I must be getting used to the routine already; I can't think of much else to write about. Funny that I should get used to the routine just before breaking it.
We left around 8:30am for New Orleans. The first thing that I noticed as we neared the city about two hours later was a strip mall with piles of trash still sitting in the parking lot. The scenes of destruction were more powerful in general than in Pascagoula, both in terms of scale and magnitude. I saw much more of a theme I've observed since we passed through Hattiesburg on Sunday: tarps covering the roofs of many of the houses. As we drove through the city, we saw vast expanses of tarp-covered houses more than once. Piles of debris like those in the mall parking lot still sat in many parts of the city. In places, we could also see a dark stripe on many buildings left by the flood waters, showing how high they had stood.
We met with a Gulf Coast native who returned to lead a Methodist relief group in New Orleans. He talked to us for a while about the disaster and its aftereffects, and a number of facts surprised me. For one, FEMA is now predicting that the rebuilding of New Orleans will take 15-18 years, and that estimate has been steadily growing from an original 5-7 year estimate right after the storm. For another, the number of houses affected is around 417,000. Also, the death toll is still rising, since there are still a number of houses that haven't been entered since the disaster, many of which contain the remains of their owners. More bodies are discovered on a daily basis. He also showed us a map of the city (part of it, at least) which depicted the depth of flooding by color. The worst areas were under more than 10 feet of water; he said that some areas off the map were as much as 18 feet deep. During the storm, 25-foot waves washed right over levees into Saint Bernard's Parish, one of the worst-hit areas. In some cases, five-story houses moved 100 yards from their places. We heard that in areas like Saint Bernard's Parish and the Ninth Ward, only one out of nine houses is still standing. I was surprised by a major piece of red tape: The city is not going to make some critical decisions that will determine whether houses in certain areas will need to be razed or not until this fall. That means that until then, many homeowners won't be able to rebuild. I don't know how preventable this situation was, but it seems to be causing serious problems.
After our discussion, we went to a local restaurant to have some New Orleans cuisine. Most of us (including me) had the daily special, a breaded porkchop with white beans and rice. The manager decided to send us a free sample platter of crawfish - a real novelty for me. I was glad of the opportunity to try something unfamiliar (new, in fact).
After eating, we went to have a look around the French Quarter. Built above sea level, this area wasn't hit nearly as hard as most of the city, because it saw primarily wind damage, and very little of the flooding that devastated most of the rest of New Orleans. The French Quarter also happens to be home to the infamous Bourbon Street and some of the. . . seedier establishments in the city. I found it ironic, in a way, that such businesses should be fully up and running when so much of the city is so far from it. That's not to say that it's a matter of people's priorities; they just had the high ground, literally. The situation certainly highlights the ridiculousness of the idea that this event was some kind of punishment from God for lewd behavior or anything like that.
Next, we were going to drive to Saint Bernard's Parish to take in the magnitude of the destruction there. I think we did get there, but we couldn't find the place where we could stop and get out of our vans, so I only saw things through the window as we drove. Still, I saw quite a bit. In the ditch at one point along the road were the burnt-out remains of a house that had been torn from its foundation. Ruined houses were everywhere - I saw two that had been smashed in by trees, one on which a porch had completely collapsed, and many, many more similarly affected. We did waste the entire afternoon looking for the place we were trying to get to, but it was important for us to see just how bad the area was.
Because we got lost, our plans to get work done today fell through. We got back to Pascagoula shortly before they stopped serving supper (we left after our trip through St. Bernard's Parish). All thirteen of us had a meeting at 9:00pm, during which we had a final discussion about the trip. I think one of the most important things I learned is the sheer extent of the disaster and the amount of work that will need to be done to put things right again. It seems that awareness of these things outside of the region is pathetic; I hope I can do something to correct that. This web page ought to be a start.
We're going to head back to Omaha tomorrow morning. I'm not sure whether I'll get Internet access again or not before we get there, so I might not be able to post anything more here until we get back on Saturday. Still, whether on Friday night or Saturday night, I will post again.
We got up, packed our things, and had our last meal at the church before 7:30am, at which time we gathered outside by the vans for a final prayer before our departure. For this one, "Our Fearless Leader" told us that we wouldn't leave until everybody said at least a couple of words. That got some responses out of us. After we'd all said something, we got into the vans and started our trip back. There was a great deal of sleeping during the first leg, and in fact all, of the trip. At one point, we hooked up an inverter to the van, which allowed me to use my laptop for large portions of the drive.
We stopped for a late lunch around 2:00pm and then for a late supper around 8:00pm. By 10:00pm or so, we finally arrived at the church in Columbia, MO where we would spend the night. At this point, we only have half a day of driving left until we get back to Omaha.
I got up around 6:30am or so and gathered my things. Before we left, we came together to have one last talk about the trip and about the transition back to our usual lives. The usefulness of journaling in remembering these events came up, and it made me glad that I was able to keep such a thorough record of my experiences here.
We hit the road around 7:30am, had breakfast in Odessa, and drove straight to Omaha, save for a quick bathroom break in Mound City. We arrived in Omaha around 1:00pm, an hour earlier than planned. We unloaded our vans and started calling people to pick us up. The same girl who let us stay in her house at the beginning of the trip (and gave us a ride to Omaha before that) had her parents bring her car. They also brought cake, a nice treat for us all. After taking a group picture, we went our separate ways, those of us from Lincoln catching the same ride we had on that first Friday.
So, now I'm back in Lincoln, getting unpacked and preparing for Monday, when my classes start again. I would say the most important and obvious thing I've gained from this trip is a new appreciation for the situation on the Gulf and a drive to share it with others who are as insulated from the situation as I was. I hope that someday in the near future I can return and help some more.
* I stand corrected - there were six of us from Lincoln, the four who rode to Omaha together, and two more who joined us there.
