2 posts tagged “hands on new orleans”
Despite having HBO, I didn’t watch the Spike Lee documentary or the stuff on the Discovery Channel. After the first couple of days, a year and a half ago, I stopped paying attention to news about Hurricane Katrina. I’m up in Boston and New Orleans just seemed far away, and now it seems so long ago. I just assumed that things in the city were better, back on track. I found out last week that they’re not.
I was in New Orleans for four days last week as part of reconnaissance for the annual leadership conference. My first afternoon, I drove from the airport and things seemed normal. I drove past the SuperDome and it was intact. I stayed near the French Quarter where all seemed operational, save for a few restaurants yet to reopen. That night, I went to a Mardi Gras festival and the locals were exuberant, despite the theme “Habitat for Insanity” and signs like “FEMA approved” and “Home is still where the tarp is”. But then I started to talk to a few of the residents, and they felt neglected, exhausted, and still very overwhelmed. It was apparent that Katrina created a Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder of some sort for the survivors. I told some people about the conference and repeatedly heard, "Thank you for having the conference in New Orleans - we need it."
That was what I saw and heard in my first six hours in town. Still not knowing what to expect, the next day I drove to find the devastation. I’d heard that the destruction affected 80% of the city but was unprepared for the vastness of what that meant. I drove for miles and miles, past a ton of empty neighborhoods, boarded up houses, signs advertising trash removal and pressure washing, abandoned businesses and inactive gas stations.
And then there was the lower ninth ward. The difference between that area and the rest of the destruction is that in the lower ninth ward, houses were literally leveled with no signs of recovery. They were crushed, crumpled and literally washed away. No one was home. It was eerie. The houses in other neighborhoods were mostly intact but as shells, and there were some that were occupied and many that were under construction, signs of life. Not so in the lower ninth. I felt sick.
Throughout the city, I saw many images of the fleur d' lis, not just as a logo of the New Orleans Saints. I understood it to be a French symbol that is part of the city’s history, but learned that, in recent usage, it's been used as a symbol of New Orleans' rebirth and rebuilding. These residents’ spirits will not be shattered. That is what this symbol tells us. I find that profoundly moving.
The staff and volunteers at Hands On New Orleans are amazing. Largely AmeriCorps members and alums, they have taken charge of a massive volunteer effort, coordinating a ton of different projects in various neighborhoods of the city. The office and volunteer management system are tightly organized, efficiently run, and by enormously dedicated people. They’re an inspiring bunch, still hopeful.
As an AmeriCorps alum, meeting the people from Hands On New Orleans challenged me to think about the service I
Since I’ve been back in Boston, I try to tell everyone I know about my trip. I’m finding that most people aren’t interested in hearing it and I’m losing them after thirty seconds, no follow up questions. To them, like to me, Katrina seems so far away and so long ago. It’s not. I heard on the radio last week, "Broadcast live to all the evacuees on B97.com." Only 50% of the city’s population is back. I want everyone to get the same kind of reality check I got. And I want us all, in a revolutionary way, to do something big about it. The conference is a great start.
-Bernadette Smith
For more information on the Hands on Network Leadership Conference, please click here.
Thursday, November 10, 2006
New Orleans, Louisiana
Well, I made it to New Orleans! Our hosts, HandsOn New Orleans (a partner organization of Boston Cares), are great. They have energy and they are practical. After we arrived, we received a great orientation and safety lecture, since as you can imagine, there is mold and stuff to be concerned about as well as falling debris.
I found my team leader for the day, whose name was Jess. She's a part of the AmeriCorps group that is traveling and doing community service. After they leave next week, her group will continue onto , where they will help with the Katrina rebuilding there. I got my Tyvek, which is that suit that you usually see haz-mat workers wear only this one is white. I also got my respirator mask and goggles and gloves. Then it was decided since we were doing a "last gut" which required primarily nail removal, that carpenter's face would be fine and so I returned my respirator.
A "last gut" is the finally stage of gutting a house. Once this is done, rebuilding work can begin. The people whose homes are receiving this work from HandsOn New Orleans volunteers contacted the office and requested the help. Usually once the request is received, volunteers go to the property and scout it out. If it poses too much of a risk (unstable floors for example) , then they cannot work on the house and refer them to someone who can.
The house that we went to was on . We proceeded to remove nails, nails and more nails with hammers. I don't think I have ever interacted with that many nails in my whole life. After
the nails were removed, we swept up the nails and other debris that was
left in the house. The debris was left on the curb side grass by the
side of the house. Jess informed us that debris removal is a part of
the garbage pickup around here. They come by and pick it up daily.
Jess
was a great team leader and guide. She was informative and had energy.
She clearly loved the fact that she was helping people in the best way
that she could. She drove us around the neighborhood where we completed
our morning's work and showed us the houses, some of which had
extensive damage. One enduring sight for the day was the FEMA trailers.
They were in the yards of people's houses or in FEMA trailer parks.
As
we made our way to the now infamous Ninth Ward, we saw that the houses
had spray paint on them. We were told that these markings, which have
words and/or numbers in either a cross 
or
an "X" represented the teams that swept the properties after the
disaster. The upper left quadrant represented the team that went in to
do the sweep. The lower left represented the number of dead that they
found. The lower right represented the number that were found alive.
The upper right represented where they were found. After receiving this
information, the markings took on a whole new grim meaning for me since
we had prior to her explanation, passed a number of places where I saw
totals of anywhere between 1-4 in that lower left quadrant that tallies
the dead bodies found. The number dead will also include pets, which
are also noted in spray paint. The MSPCA did quite a few sweeps. We
were also told that earlier in the summer, a HandsOn team was doing a
"first gut"-taking down the wall and ceiling-and they found an older
woman under her sink that the sweep teams clearly did not find. There
are so many houses to check, but so few resources at hand.
We
drove into the Ninth Ward. It was very quiet, except for some green
industry crews doing branch removal and some
traffic. There is no
electricity here so no one in their right mind
(or left mind for that matter) comes here at night. In fact, where
there would usually be stop lights, there are stop signs and people are
trusted to remember the rules of the road. There are also no gas
stations so if you are going over there and you don't plan ahead, you
are out of luck. As we drove around, it was sobering to see that where
what looked like plots of open land were places where houses once
stood. The Ninth Ward was densely populated-this you can tell from how
the remaining structures and traces of the structures are situated.
Jess showed us the now repaired levees and indicated about where they
broke. We then took a tour of the more affluent parts of the city that
suffered more hurricane damage than flooding. All around you could see
contractors working, but if you visited these areas only you would have
never known Katrina had taken place.
~Emma Lathan, Boston Cares member since 1998
