Goshen, Litchfield, Salisbury & Warren Joint Church Youth Group Trip to New Orleans for Katrina Relief

Today we learned how to “gut a home”. After we drove to our first home in St. Bernard’s Parish, our guide explained what needed to be done in the house. They told us that we need to take the carpet and padding, the linoleum and all of the sheet rock up to the ceiling. They gave us hammers, flat bars, an axe, flat shovels and spades, rakes, garbage cans and wheel barrows. They suggested that we break into 5 or 6 person teams, pick a room and start with removing any furnishings and then taking the floor covering out. (That way the floor is smoother for the shovels to clean up all of the broken sheet rock.) Then shovel all of the sheet rock into the garbage cans and wheel barrows and take it to the curve. After all of the sheet rock is picked up, we then remove all of the nails from the studs and we are done with the house.

After we walked into our first house, everything was still there, furniture, appliances, food in the fridge, pictures on the walls, toys on the floor, computers, TVs and Stereos were all strewn about. We could see how much their lives had been turned upside down. We had now idea where the people who owned the house were, but we knew that they had requested that their house be gutted and they came to the top of the list.

As instructed we peeled up the muddy carpets, the stained flooring until we were down to the concrete. Then we punched holes in the sheet rock at the top of the walls, and then ripped it down from the top with our hands. Most of the sheet rock crumbled into small pieces because it had been under water about 5 feet up the wall. After that the nails were taken out of the studs, swept out the house, and we were done with our first home before lunch. We beat the record for YWAM in completing a “gut” in less than a day. We were rewarded at the end of this house by a rain shower that soaked us to the bone and rinsed off some of the dust from our clothes.

After having lunch and using the bathroom at a convenience market, we were on to our second home. This home was much bigger and another group had already taken the furniture out, but left the carpets and flooring for the next group. This building would take quite a bit longer because it was larger and had 10 foot ceilings. The ceiling was still in good shape in this house and the water only came up 9 feet in the house and the mud line was evident up near the crown molding. We took out most of the sheet rock and only have some cleaning up and the nails to take care of. We will probably finish this house on Wednesday. We quit about 3:30 and went back to the house to get a shower. We will all sleep good to night, even if the guy in the next bunk is snoring.

Bob