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

Today we started on “gutting” a two story home in a very nice neighborhood.  The water in this house came halfway up the wall on the second floor, about 14 feet above street level.  On the same street, there were single family homes that were completely submerged when the water was at the highest.  When we opened the front door on this house, the smell came right out at you.  Everything was still in the house and all of the furniture on the first floor was on it’s side.  After we made a way through the living room, we made a way into the kitchen where the fridge was on it’s side and still full of food in storage containers. The smell just stays on us and never quite goes away.  The food left in the microwave was rotted and contained maggots.   All of the cabinets in the kitchen and the other rooms had fallen apart because they were under water for so long and the contents all over the floor.  When we first walked in, and until we began to clear the place, we were walking on almost a foot of solidified, rotten debris – impossible to know what it used to be, and able only to be removed by shovel.  By the end of this day, we were only able to remove the furniture, the bookcases and their contents, empty the closets, the garage and the storage rooms.  We even were able to get about half of the hardwood floor up on the first floor that was glued to the concrete.  We began to remove the shoe moldings and we will be able to pull the carpets out tomorrow.  Because this is a two story house, it will go a little slower because we will not be able to use the wheel barrows on the second floor and will need to throw everything out the windows, or carry it downstairs in plastic garbage cans.  The owner of the house was there and he was very glad to see us come.  He  bought us several cases of Gatorade to replenish us and said “he would be honored if we each took one thing home from his house to remember his family by”.  I thought that this was very touching.  One girl kept a New Orleans version of Trivial Pursuit, another boy took a couple of Led Zepplen albums, another Mardi Gras beads, another a child’s toy.  On one of the trips down the stairs with a garbage can full of stuff, I noticed that a baseball was rolling out into the road from the can I just emptied by the street.  I knew then that I had found my memento.  We were able to save the child’s drum set because it floated around on the second floor and was not harmed.  We also saved some girls toys.  Other items like Lego blocks, record collections, video games, exercise equipment, bedroom furniture, furniture full of folded clothes, Boy Scout uniforms, photograph albums, confirmation certificates and the list goes on and on.  As you can see, it is a very personal thing to go through these items and cast them away as trash.

July 5, 2006Update….We finished gutting house number two today.  This was a pretty big house, I mean a pretty BIG house, actually, a PRETTY BIG HOUSE.  It was so amazing – the owners of the house were there to greet us , and spent the day with us.  The temperature was in the nineties, the humidity about 100%, and the house filled with mold.  The water line stood at 9 feet off the floor – and two weeks after the hurricane, there was STILL two feet of water and muck in the house.  The amazing part of the day was watching the entire crew work.  Everyone kept at it, in spite of the heat, in spite of the dirt and the smell and the mold and the slimy, slippery mud, and finally the torrential downpours.  We are with some of the most incredible teenagers!  They enthusiastically tackled the project, worked through many difficulties; their only complaint when we had to leave the site without completely finishing every part of the job.  They are awesome  – the experience is awesome.  On to the next house!!!  kn 

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

This morning, we went to the Revard Detention Center for 12 to 18 year old kids, to bring a worship service that we had prepared.  We had volunteers from each of the churches that traveled with us share in song, drama, and testimonies.  The rest of us served in the choir leading them in song or in scripture reading, and afterwards we were able to greet them and shake their hands to wish them well. 

After church we went out to WalMart to pick up some forgotten essentials before we go to the field tomorrow to work.  We are about to take a tour by car through the ninth ward and other places to see the damage caused by the flooding.  In the area we are staying now, there is only evidence of wind damage from the hurricane. 

By:Paula, Brenda, Helena, Holly and Kathy 

Today we visited the 9^th Ward and Youth With A  Mission, YWAM.  YWAN was where we met Bronwyn and Steven Niles.  They showed us the 9^th Ward.  There was a lot of destruction, garbage, emptiness throughout the tour.  We saw sunflowers near houses that had been totally destroyed.  It was a sign of hope.  It was upsetting to see the debris and think about people who had been there for years and built their lives there.  It was a natural disaster, but now, nine months later, it has become a human disaster.  Despite some delays and leaving certain group members behind, (we found them after a short time), we were able to move on and see parts of the ninth ward and other levee breeches.  We saw an empty house that was destroyed and a man sitting on the porch waving at us.  It was awkward to be there, we felt that we were invading their private lives and stepping too far into some thing that was close to the people that lived there.  When we looked into the houses that were left, you saw toys, clothes and their personal lives.  It was a chilling experience to see a neighborhood that once existed and is now basically nothing, only imagining what happened to their lives and wondering where they went.  Now the question is, “Can, or will they come back?”

Today we traveled from Hartford to
New Orleans without a hitch!  Moving through an airport with 35 other people to keep track of is something different for me.  After we landed in
New Orleans, we picked up three fifteen passenger vans and one cargo van for our luggage and drove from the airport to the house that we are staying in.  The house is on quiet street and we were pleased to find that the house is air conditioned which will feel great after a hard day in 90 degree humidity. 

After dinner to night we had a meeting of the upcoming week and practiced our parts for the church service at the detention center with the teen age detainees.  After service we will come back to the base house, change our clothes and head out for a tour of the damaged areas. 

We found out today that we will spend most of our time in the field gutting homes.  This will require our teams to remove the drywall that was spoiled by the flood waters and carry it to the curb where the FEMA tractors will load it into dump trucks.  This will be our main activity for Monday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday.  This work will be done on homes that they know the owners are coming back to. 

Bob