New Orleans Mission Trip

There is an ongoing story in New Orleans that needs to be told and needs to be understood. The second group of Pohick volunteers spent the week of January 28 through February 3 working with the Episcopal Diocese of Louisiana (EDOLA) Hurricane Relief Program. The Pohick group consisted of Susan Homar, Jane Piver, Carolyn Cockcroft, Sandra Caesar, Lisa Trujillo, Candy Devou, Kathy Kirkland, and Jim Heller. Lisa and Candy did not start the week as official Pohickians, but instead fell into the category of “friends of Susan.” However, by the end of the week, they were fully adopted.

Truly the only skills needed are a willing heart, a reasonably healthy body, and an ability to follow instructions. The program is a well-organized effort that provides the physical labor and tools to homeowners in New Orleans to begin the process of rebuilding. EDOLA has no criteria for being accepted into the program except that the person has a home in the greater New Orleans area and needs help. Most who request help have little or no insurance, and are paying both a mortgage for a home they cannot live in as well as rent.

The diocese may officially run the program, but the real leadership comes from a group of recent college grads, mostly from Kenyon College and Grinnell College. They provide a talk in the morning about the house to be worked on, and the basics of the homeowner’s story, drive the van/truck with the tools, conduct a walkthrough on-site to give an overview of the day’s activities, and supervise all the work. Supervision includes ensuring that everyone follows safety rules. They deal with the homeowners if they are there (and do a wonderfully sensitive job), call the volunteers out of the house every 90 minutes or so for water breaks (which are also respites from the emotions), and work their tails off. They work from 8:00 am to 4:00 pm each day doing one of the dirtiest, toughest jobs imaginable and they do it for a bed at night and $1,000 a month. Most commit to stay for 3 - 6 months. Some stay longer. They are wonderful human beings.

The rules in New Orleans are that homes must be gutted and mold remediation completed before they can be rebuilt. The professional contractors in New Orleans charge between $4,000 - $8,000 per house for homes in the 1,200 to 2,000 square foot range. EDOLA does not even ask for a thank you. There are many good reasons for gutting the homes rather than simply leveling them. Here are just three of them.

1. The most important task of the EDOLA teams is sifting through the debris for those items that will help the homeowner rebuild emotionally. It is amazing how many items are salvageable even after 18 months. Sometimes it is the smallest things that get people to feel connected again. A gold watch was found for an 80 year old homeowner, and a rock collection in a plastic kid’s tackle box was found for a 20 year old. The team leaders spoke of finding one woman’s Christmas dishes. It doesn’t seem like much, but it can be the world to those who have lost everything else.

2. Gutting the homes allows inspection of the structure to determine if rebuilding is feasible. If the basic structure is sound, the costs to rebuild are reduced by half.

3. Content removal and gutting also provide an environmental service even if the house will eventually be razed. During the gutting process the contents are separated into white goods (large appliances which can be recycled), hazardous materials (pesticides, old paint, solvents, etc. that an EPA contractor disposes of), electrical appliances/fixtures, and general landfill trash.

There are still 5,000 - 10,000 homes in need of gutting so this effort will be continuing for some time. It is easier psychologically to return to a house ready to be rebuilt. While it is readily understood that people might not be able to tear down the walls of their home, it sounds strange that many have not returned to clean out their personal belongings until the almost total devastation left by such a flood is experienced. It is both an emotional and physically daunting task. It is hard to believe that there is anything worth saving and since all the damage is attributed to flood, there is little or no insurance coverage.

All four houses worked on by the Pohick group belonged to working class families who received little or nothing from their insurance companies. They now own homes they cannot live in. The stories of the four houses we worked on are below.

The first homeowner in Gentilly was an older single parent of a mentally handicapped son. During the Katrina flooding, she had spent five days on the overpass near the superdome. She considers herself very lucky. She has a FEMA trailer in her front yard, she still has a job, and she’s managed to remove the contents from her home. That she is a food service worker making just above minimum wage, only received $394 from the insurance on her home and that her son is in a group home in Boston until she can move out of her trailer are temporary setbacks. Her faith is seeing her through. She was so thrilled with what was accomplished she had tears in her eyes but a smile on her face. When the Pohick group would not accept personal payment, she donated $1,000 to the EDOLA effort. This donation probably represented all she had saved to pay a contractor to gut her house.

The second homeowner was an 80 year old lady who, at the time of the storm, was living alone in the house where she and her husband had raised their family. The home is in Chalmette, just outside of New Orleans in St. Bernard Parish. It is a single story on concrete slab with less than 1,800 square feet. She is living in a trailer about two hours away and the house had not been touched since Katrina. The floodwaters in Chalmette reached an average of 15-20 feet. When they receded what was left was a bottom layer of her furniture and possessions, a thick layer of mud, and the ceiling and insulation on the top. The one thing she wanted was a gold watch that she said was in the master bedroom. Candy spent two hours sifting through the muck that was the bedroom to find the watch. There is serious doubt it will ever run again but she has her watch.

The third house was approximately 70% gutted. A family of four owned the house in the Gentilly section of the city. The father was a hospital aide who worked at Ochsner Medical Center, one of two hospitals able to stay open throughout the crisis. The entire family is working on the cleanup efforts but the son is only home during college breaks. Like most people, their insurance did not cover more than $500 of the loss. It took a team of eight people six hours to remove plaster from the walls and ceiling in one bedroom, one bathroom, a small hall, and four small closets. By the end of the day, everyone was exhausted, and the idea of tackling this after working an eight to twelve hour hospital shift was mind boggling.

The fourth house was perhaps among the saddest. It too was in the Gentilly section of town where water rose above the roofline. Just prior to Katrina, the house had a new roof put on, there was a new deck that was now halfway into the next yard, and the owner was obviously in the midst of putting up new vinyl siding when Katrina hit. There is no way this home will be rebuilt. Structurally weak when built, it survived the flood somewhat intact but the inherent weaknesses will doom it. Without Katrina, it wouldn’t have been a great house, but it would have sufficed. In addition to a full time job, the father had a small business with novelty playing cards that he and his son operated out of the house. Approximately 10,000 decks of cards, his entire stock, were thrown away. The business is also gone with the flood.

The son came by as we were cleaning out the house. He appeared to be no older than twenty. When he first saw the team and introduced himself, he said the hurricane had “taken all [his] memories.” When he then saw what had been set aside as salvageable: an autographed football, his father’s business license, and a couple of badly damaged yet identifiable pictures, his body language told the story. He asked if the team would look for his rock collection. No one saw his reaction when he returned, but there was an emotional reaction of the team as they all looked at a young boy’s rock collection in a red plastic tackle box knowing that at least one memory had been recovered.

The question remains of what was brought home - memories of tourist New Orleans looking perfectly normal and other neighborhoods looking like Katrina hit last month, not 18 months ago, disappointment in the state and federal officials who are supposedly being paid to help these people, the memory of a house with a refrigerator on the roof that no governmental office had seen fit to help remove, and hope.

There was a renewed faith in the Episcopal Church and in the young people of this country. The Episcopal churches of New Orleans opened their doors, their kitchens and their hearts to the volunteers and the less fortunate of New Orleans.