new orleans

Two Years Later, New Orleans Homes Still in Rubble

By Angela E. Pometto
Special to the HERALD
(From the Issue of 6/21/07) new orleans

I boarded a plane for New Orleans last month with a group of 13 college-age students and their chaperones from three Arlington parishes. We traveled to Louisiana to help those who had been affected by Hurricane Katrina. I wasn’t sure what to expect almost two years after the storm hit. I thought by now the city should be on the road to recovery.
What I found was quite the opposite.
Twenty-two months after Hurricane Katrina, the people of New Orleans are still trying to recover. The front pages of newspapers still contain stories about how to obtain hurricane relief funds or about schools that need help to reopen. Residential areas are littered with boarded-up houses and trailers where people are living as their homes are rebuilt. Many gas stations, fast food restaurants and local businesses have closed their doors and have not reopened.
But people are hopeful — especially when they see groups of volunteers coming to help rebuild.
Our group, representing St. Mary of Sorrows Parish in Fairfax, St. Mark Parish in Vienna and St. Thomas a Becket Parish in Reston, volunteered with Catholic Charities from the Archdiocese of New Orleans. We gave a week of our summer to show the people of New Orleans that the rest of the country has not forgotten them.
Our task was to gut houses. After the floods of Katrina, many homes were infested with mold and spores, making it unsafe to breathe. Workers wore safety masks to avoid catching what the locals named the “Katrina cough.” new orleans house
We started with a house in the heart of New Orleans, just off one of the main highways. The homeowner, Mr. Nash, worked alongside us and joined us in prayer to start each day.
He and his wife and mother had lived there before Katrina hit. The house was split into a duplex, and he rented out the second half. Ever since the hurricane, he has been working on the house.
The young adults were given hammers or crowbars to tear the walls and ceilings down. They demolished dry wall, tore down wood boards, pulled out loose nails in the foundation and then cleaned up the mess.
It took us three days to finish gutting his house. All the debris was dumped in the front of the house. By the end, our pile went two feet into the street and nearly 20 feet down the road. As we finished, many other neighbors started coming out to see the work we’d done.
One of the memorable moments for John Linder, a young adult from St. Mark Parish, was when a neighbor came to congratulate Mr. Nash.
“We were neighbors before the storm, and we’ll be neighbors again after the storm,” he said.
The fourth day — the most emotional day of the trip — took us to the home of Miss Valerie. The widow still had many of her personal possessions in the house. Before we could really begin gutting it, we had to get these items out of the way, which meant Miss Valerie had to decide what she could throw away.
We helped her sort through old clothes, photo albums, old cards and letters and her husband’s things — 30 years of memories. A fancy set of encyclopedias ended up in the trash pile too contaminated with mold to be usable. Most of her clothes were trashed as well, though she held onto her wedding dress.
“In some ways, a fire would be easier to deal with,” said Kelly Power, youth minister from St. Thomas a Becket. With a fire, all the possessions are just gone. With a flood, the possessions are still in tact but need to be tossed.
At the end of the day, several neighbors went through the trash pile for anything they might be able to use. According to Linda Ward, our site supervisor, this has become a common practice throughout the city.
We weren’t able to finish gutting Miss Valerie’s house, but we gave her a good start. At the end of the day, Miss Valerie gave everyone hugs and thanked us for our hard work.
“I didn’t talk to her all day, but she still showed her love to us,” said Lindsay Skillman from St. Thomas a Becket. “It really touched me.”
Another big part of the trip was meeting new people and growing spiritually, according to Skillman.
“We all worked together as a team,” said Michael McDermott, 19, from St. Mark Parish.
Besides the actual work, the tri-parish group also experienced New Orleans. We ate crawfish and jambalaya, spent an afternoon in the French Quarter and attended a Gospel Mass at St. Leo Church in New Orleans on Sunday. Despite everything the people of New Orleans have experienced, the Gospel Mass was a very joyful experience with lots of clapping and swaying to the music.
We drove through the Ninth Ward, the hardest hit section of New Orleans. Many of the young adults agreed that seeing the damage firsthand was more powerful than seeing it on TV.
“You think it’s not like that in real life, but it is,” said McDermott.
“It hits you emotionally to see all these people who were forced out of their homes,” said Ben Porter, from St. Mark Parish.
“This is a national disaster. And I don’t mean the hurricane,” said Ward. She explained that the government has aid available for hurricane relief, but there are so many stipulations that it is hard for people to get the money they need.
Catholic Charities is now ready to begin reconstructing homes, although they are still receiving requests for help, said Jonathan McGee, director of volunteers for Catholic Charities in New Orleans. They estimate at least three more years of work ahead of them.
The three parishes plan to come together for a college-age mission trip again next summer and to open it up to students from other parishes. For more information e-mail collegelife@stmaryofsorrows.org or call 703/978-4141, ext. 11.

Pometto is a former staff writer for the Arlington Catholic Herald.