Bucknell Katrina Recovery Team

The past two days we have been back to gutting houses. Yesterday we started on a zero percent house. This means that nothing has been done to the house and its still how it was right after the hurricane hit. This was the first house like this that I have done. We walked in before starting to work to inspect and the sight was unbelievable. The water picks up all of the items in the house and then drops them randomly when the water diminishes. Everything was thrown about. To us it was all stuff, but to the owner it’s all of her possessions. The work was hard and it took all day to almost finish the house. We even stayed a hour late. At lunch we had the chance to talk to a few residents in the neighborhood. Our talk was very interesting. They said that almost their entire neighborhood was moving back in, unlike most. Also, there was a woman, her son, and her grandson that lived in the house we were working on and they had not been seen since the storm. The most surprising thing was that they were surprised we weren't getting paid and thought we were crazy to be down there.