Parish Cleanup Satisfying, Humbling
Little Sign of Government Involvement
by Doreen Mazzanti, Ehryn McNamer and Kathy

A big THANK YOU to the generosity of our Firm, Crabbe, Brown & James, who allowed us to travel to Chalmette, Louisiana, to help with the cleanup of the St. Bernard Parish which was destroyed by Hurricane Katrina and floods on August 29, 2005.

For one week, we lived on a FEMA base camp, capable of housing and feeding up to 2000 volunteers. During our visit, there were approximately 1200 volunteers on site. The majority of volunteers were from Habitat for Humanity. Other groups included Americorps and Samaritans Purse. Also living in the camp were residents of St. Bernard Parish still awaiting their FEMA trailer. We saw hundreds of FEMA trailers unoccupied, sitting on empty lots, waiting to be assigned. Only 10% of the residents remain in St. Bernard Parish (pre-Katrina pop. approx. 70,000). 95% of businesses were closed. We found only 1 small grocery store and 2 gas stations open.

We spoke with many of the residents during the week. They were all very thankful for the help of the volunteers. The job is a massive undertaking. From the airport to this location, there were very few cars on the road, and almost no wildlife seen. The homes remain untouched for the most part (save a few piles of rubble along the roads). Cars are still strewn about, many of them in fields and alongside roads.

We lived in tents that housed 12 people, ate at the mess hall and had to display our badges to the Federal Agents walking around the camp. We showered in a portable trailer and used outdoor port-o-pots. Photography was not allowed in Camp Premier as it is a Federal Facility. Every morning we woke up at 7:00, ate breakfast, gathered our gear, got on a bus, and was dropped off at a house to clean. It was unsupervised, so we had to be smart about how we worked on the house. Occasionally, the owners would show up at their to salvage what they could. We kept personal items that could be cleaned in one pile, otherwise, the rest of the contents of each house got put in a pile on the curb, hopefully to be removed in the future.

st bernard coming back The experience was humbling and one we will never forget. We realize the effort of only three of us is very small compared to the job ahead. Hopefully St. Bernard and the surrounding areas will improve as time passes. We are honored and blessed to have a warm bed and home to return to.

Hurricane Katrina Cleanup -- Do It. Now.

myself by Michael Powe
Chalmette, LA -- I'm writing from a military-style tent in "Camp Premier" in Chalmette, LA. The camp houses several groups that are assisting the St Bernard parish in post-hurricane Katrina cleanup. I'm here as a volunteer for Habitat for Humanity. For the next five days, I will be helping clean out houses to get them ready for repair.

The parish suffered significant structural damage to 100% of its buildings. They need help. H4H can bring in up to 1300 volunteers per week through June. The stated goal is to clean 5000 buildings by then. At the present rate, it doesn't look to me like they'll get half that. As of the end of the tour for our team Gold 15, around 800 homes had been cleaned.

They need help. They need hands, backs and hearts to get this cleanup done. Sending money is not enough. Blog-viating won't do it. Go to your boss and get the time off. Go to your church, your social club or your next-door neighbor and sign people up.

Sign up. Stop talking about it and do something about it.

Until you have been here, you cannot know how bad it is. The richest country in the world. More than six months after the event. The rehabilitation process barely has begun. 9th ward
A Sobering View

building by Michael Powe
Chalmette, LA -- I arrived at about 2:00 pm Central Time in Chalmette. Driving through town to the volunteer camp is sobering. It would be a long, typical drive through strip malls and fast food outlets, except that most everything is blown out by the storm. Businesses abandoned, windows boarded up or just empty of glass, trash, some buildings already razed and just piles of machine-made rubble. Everywhere, people working, cleaning, dragging out damaged goods. Signs advertising business to help clean up or remove storm-damaged detritus. It's 6 months after Katrina hit, in the richest country in the world. For shame.

The camp is surrounded by chainlink fence and guarded. There's an admission gate, guarded. No photographs allowed. The rules of the camp are fairly strict. No food in the sleeping tents, no drinks other than water. No appliances plugged into the tent outlets (e.g., TVs) -- this seems to apply to any heavy users of electricity. There's wireless internet. Meals are served in a huge dining tent. St Bernard's Parish is under dusk to dawn curfew. The camp doesn't have a curfew but quiet time is 10 pm to 6 am. There are separate men's and women's showers.

There are some pretty large groups of volunteers, a lot of church groups and groups of university students.

The orientation showed how daunting is the task. It's not daunting, it's overwhelming. They want to do 5000 buildings by the end of June. Based on their current progress, it looks to me like they'll be doing well to get half that. No taxes are being collected. The parish is not just broke, it's destroyed.

The "Gold 15" Team

The Habitat For Humanity (H4H) volunteers are organized into teams upon registration at the camp. Each team consists of roughly a dozen members. The Gold 15 team for the week of March 20 through March 25 consisted of: Michael Powe, Tom Sly, Dave Alpern, Mark Brown, Chris Osgood, Chris Laws, Marianne & Ed Greene, Madison Mauze, Michael Brookshire, Farhad Nanji, Doreen Mazzanti, and Ehryn McNamer.

Michael Powe was a volunteer from Naugatuck, CT, who came by himself. Tom Sly, Dave Alpern, Mark Brown, Chris Osgood, Chris Laws, Madison Mauze, Michael Brookshire and Farhad Nanji are students in the class of 2006 at Harvard Business School. They came as a group during the school's Spring Break. Marianne and Ed Greene came from Florida's east coast, near Daytona Beach. Marianne was a retired schoolteacher and Ed was a retired middle school principal. Doreen Mazzanti and Ehryn McNamer both worked for a law firm in Ohio and travelled to Camp Premier together.

Marianne and Ed worked only Monday, March 20. We never heard from them after that day, and the camp coordinators were unable to contact them during the rest of the week. On Thursday, they were "replaced" by Doreen and Ehryn, who came from another team on which they were not happy working.

This was the second tour of duty for Chris Osgood, who also had volunteered during Christmas break.

Confusion Gives Way to Connection

Wednesday was something of a cluster, with a good ending. There was some logistical confusion at the start. The house we were supposed to go to, was already finished. Then there was some further bus driving around the neighborhood and then we went back the way we came, past the camp to the other side of town. Eventually, we were dropped at a house that was marked "40% completed" on the paperwork. This house had been operated on by followers of the "smashmouth" school of home reconstruction. They seem to have gone through the rooms and smashed out the walls after removing the furniture and appliances, leaving a huge mess of busted sheetrock to be removed.

The notes for the house stated that we should be on the lookout for jewelry and a purple heart. The house soon revealed a stash of 22 shells and a full speed-loader for a high-caliber weapon. This freaked out some of the guys. Then, a visit by a weapons expert from the fire department produced the information that the house had in it a set of weights such as are used for weighing explosives like C4. Several team members were uncomfortable with the thought of working around explosives, even though the fireman explained that you couldn't blow it up without a detonator.

Eventually, after much discussion, they moved to another house a short walk away, which was the residence of a woman who need some help finishing the cleanup of her home. A short while after they left, the decision was made for all of us to go there and help. The consensus was, that with all of the team there, the house could be finished that afternoon.

The owner of the house, Maxine Wilson, lives in a FEMA trailer parked in the front yard. Her brother and sister-in-law have their trailer parked there, also. Maxine has lived almost her entire life in that neighborhood. Although she was born in a small town about 50 miles away, her father moved the family into this neighborhood when she was a child and she grew up in a house just half a block from the one in which she now lives. She left when she got married, but then when her father died, she and her husband moved back so that she could help her mother. Now a retired widow, she saw her home demolished in Katrina.

"It's not my house, it's my life." -- Maxine Wilson

The water was within an inch of the ceilings. She showed us pictures of the wreckage, taken on her first visit back. Cabinets collapsed, refrigerator tipped over on top of the stove, bookshelves spilled over the desk below. To get into the house from the back door, she had to haul stuff to the door and throw it out, making a path for herself.

maxine at home We tore out sheetrock, removed some fixtures, ripped up a floor and subfloor, removed a set of walls and a kitchen counter for her. At the end of the day, she came back in to review the work with Chris and began to cry. We gave her hugs all around and gathered in front of the pile of debris, her in the center, for a picture.

Maxine faces an uncertain future, though. She told us of a relative who lives in Slidell, who is being charged $4000 for home insurance. She's waiting until after the next hurricane season to start rebuilding. If that season doesn't cause any problems, and she can get a reasonable rate on insurance, she'll rebuild this house. Otherwise, she'll have to move, possibly to Houston, where she has a daughter.

What kind of country is this? As Maxine says, it's not about the house itself, it's about the neighborhood, full of friends and family. Many of them may never come back. Some may have to leave.

Here are some photographs of our third day at work.

Day Four

Here are some photographs of our fourth day at work.