On a Mission from God . . . and Marc Bush – Tuesday – January 3, 2006 (Day 2)

Maybe before I get any further with my New Orleans journal, I should explain my involvement with the New Orleans rebuild. In the summer of 2004 I did a program called Bike and Build (find more info at http://www.bikeandbuild.org), where I biked across country (Providence, RI to Seattle, WA) to raise awareness about the poverty housing situation in America.

Bike and Build was founded by Marc Bush, a Yale alum who had done a program called Habitat Bicycle Challenge, and since HBC was mostly a Yale program, he sought to bring it to other 18 – 24 year olds around the country by starting an independent organization.

As you may know, the largest, most well-known housing organization is Habitat for Humanity, an ecumenical Christian organization. Of course, they do not have monopoly over resolving the poverty housing situation, and other groups, such as Rebuilding Together, also benefited from the money that Bike and Build raised.

Tongue-in-cheek, some B&B’ers called the cross-country trip, “A Mission from God . . . and Marc Bush.”

After Katrina hit the Gulf Coast, Erin cooked up this plan for alumni to go down to New Orleans to go volunteer. I jumped to sign on immediately.

Tuesday morning was Day 2 of our New Orleans mission. We walked to the site where we were supposed to work. Going down Canal Street, Downtown business seemed as usual; however, there were still some telltale signs of the flood that had ravaged the city.

The plexiglass on the streetcar stops all along Canal Street still had black waterlines on them. Some stores were still unopened, with plywood boards covering the windows and doors. Amelia and I peered into an abandoned Foot Locker that hadn’t been entirely secured. Inside was shattered glass and what remained of the shoes that hadn’t been looted. We reached our working sites by continuing down Canal into MidCity. Here the water damage was noticeably higher. At Moler Beauty College, the waterline was above Madison’s eyeline. For reference, he’s about 6′ tall.

We would be working on three houses, each run by Volunteers of America. Two houses were across Gayoso Street from each other, The white one was a halfway house (for recovering drug addicts) and the pink one was an SRO (single-occupancy residency for poor people and families). The third house was on Dupree, and we still had a few days before we tackled that one.

Cathy and Jim, the bigwigs of VoA in Greater New Orleans did an opening speech where they expressed their thanks for our help. As could be expected, Madison pulled out the camera and got the whole thing on tape.

We started on the halfway house first. First rule of working at a disaster site is to be properly covered and protected. I had some (very limited) training in working at disaster sites which came into good use, though the working procedure is easy to pick up. Be double-gloved, have goggles, and a facemask.

To use an oft-used phrase, I was totally unprepared for the damage inside the house — after all, it was only standing water that had crept inside. Of course, the water had been a toxic mix of gasoline, soaked rotting garbage, and overflowing sewage that, in St. Bernard Parish, had killed two DMORT dogs who had lapped up the water.

The dampness itself caused mold to grow all along the walls, sometimes even onto the ceiling. The carpet was ruined. All the bureaus had gone green, furry, and soft with mold, and the rotten wood was like putty in our hands. A simple push could cause a shelf to collapse. Chairs, somehow, were still stable enough to stand on to reach the higher places. Mattresses had gone orange from the rusting springs. Among other finds made while clearing out the house included a dirty magazine (pages stuck together, presumably from the flood and not some other fluid), what looked like a bag of crack, and some syringes. Apparently, the house was true to its word about being “halfway” — some people were still in the process and still sneaking in some cheats when they had left.

As for the kitchen, the water had so permeated the place that the two refrigerators had come off the ground and started floating. I could tell because of the waterlines on the appliances. Even though they floated, the fridges were full-sized and not featherweights. The tough part was getting them out of the house.

The first fridge was lying face down, and in order to get it on the dolly, it needed to be put back upright. The prospect of doing so seemed a bit unnerving because, since the fridge had floated face-down, it seemed logical that the toxic soup had seeped into the fridge through the doors. We would be in for a surprise if the doors flew open. Jim and Dave and a whole bunch of people (I can’t remember all of them at the moment) positioned themselves to lift the fridge upright. At the slightest lift we could see refrigerator sludge starting to ooze out of the doors, and I feared the unholiness that would be unleashed from within.

As soon as Fridge Team #1 got the fridge to stand upright, the bottom fridge door burst open and out poured a slew of food that had been liquifying and rotting for four months, plus the toxic city waters of gasoline, rotting garbage, and human sewage that can only be best described as refrigerator sludge. Out, out it gushed until it covered a good three-foot radius around the fridge on the linoleum floor.

To say that the smell emanating from them was also absolutely rancid would be an understatement. As I type, remembering the whole scene, the putrid smell comes back to my mind. I know I can’t properly evoke the repulsiveness of the smell, and the only illustration that I can provide to you is such: After Fridge Team #1 dollied out I found a pile of white on the floor that was maybe half a foot high and a foot wide. At first I thought it was a pile of rice that had spilled out from the fridge with the rest of the sludge.

Upon closer inspection I realized that it was actually a pile of drowned maggots.

The second fridge had floated face up, and the waterline showed that the city’s toxic brew most likely did not get inside the doors. Perhaps the insde of this fridge wouldn’t be as bad as the first one. Dina and I decided to investigate and she opened the bottom door.

The smell was just as bad.

So bad, that despite the face mask, Dina nearly gagged and had to rush outside for fresh air. I promptly slammed the door shut and joined her.

To prevent the doors from bursting open again while moving the fridge, Steph (or was it someone else?) borrowed duct tape from the neighbors to seal the doors shut.

We spent the rest of the morning throwing out moldy furniture, moldy clothes, rotten food in the shelves, tearing out carpet — by noon we had thrown out so much in front of the house that the pile of waste, if that is the appropriate term, was 5′ tall, 8′ thick, and 20′ wide.

We were drained by noontime and while we were eager to explore the second house (an SRO), we couldn’t work until Cathy brought the lunch.

In the meantime, Caterpillars came. The bulldozers, that is. Blocks of the city had been contracted out to companies who would get rid of the material that people had to gut from their houses because of flooding damage. The workers are paid by how much stuff they move, so each individual company can’t clear blocks to which they are not contracted, or else they’d be depriving someone else of a paycheck.

Seeing the clash of Caterpillars was a sight to behold. Dare I say it, that it was rather entertaining? Had it been the removal of just regular trash it would have been something as rah-rah as a monster truck rally. But to think that what they were hauling were people’s memories . . .. Perhaps the fact that these were halfway houses and not really permanent residences dulled the horror. Furthermore, in order to work in a disaster area, one has to have pretty thick skin. If we broke down every time, nothing would get done.

I just remember this one photo that had been on the wall, presumably of the halfway resident and his friend. On the back was scrawled a message of encouragement to end his drug abuse. I can’t think of the exact words at the moment, and I know that if I paraphrased it, the message would lose its impact. But that was just one of many things that made me realize, it was real people who were impacted by this disaster.

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If you’re still reading this, first, thank you. You’ve probably figured out by now that this is a long journal entry and that you’ve probably tired of reading. I do, however, have my reasons for my long-windedness.

1) The first day sets the tone and color for how I describe this area of New Orleans in order to contrast it to other areas of the same city and to other cities. If I don’t paint a detailed picture (such as with the maggot pile), I don’t think that I would do justice to the horror of what happened to this beautiful city.

2) I’m a poor talker (I’m OK at speaking, however) and much more articulate when it comes to writing, so I tend to write more to make up for how often I don’t talk.

The rest of Day 2, coming soon…

This post originally ran on January 15, 2006.