Well, today our intrepid team of Bucknell volunteers got to sleep in until 7 am, before breakfast and packing our four mini-vans to drive to Mississippi. We spent the day in Bay St. Louis, an area where the eye of Katrina passed directly over Hancock County. Unlike the flooding in New Orleans and St. Bernard, the water on the Mississippi Gulf Coast came in with a tremendous force of a storm surge 20- 25 feet high, but went back out within a few hours. So many homes there were not sitting in water for weeks the way that buildings in St. Bernard were, but they were severely damaged by high winds and in some cases, flattened by the storm surge carrying lots of destructive debris inland for half a mile and carrying lots of belongings and homes back out to sea.
We worked at the home of Chris LaGarde an aide to U.S. Congressman Gene Taylor. Chris weathered the storm at his family's home and got about 24 inches of water. Since Katrina, he has been doing a lot to help residents of the county get what they need from FEMA, insurance companies, local utilities, and faith-based help groups. He told the group that south Mississippi has had enough debris cleared post Katrina that it would amount to a football filed 5 miles high.
He's hosted lots of volunteers and today we actually helped at his house, splitting wood, scraping paint, taking off the blue tarp used on his roof, weeding his garden, pulling duct work from under his house, and cleaning up around the yard. These are all projects he hasn't been able to get to because he's been so busy helping others. Chris is a great storyteller and he made sure we got some authentic southern cooking for lunch.
Four of our volunteers have been testing some new blogging software and you can see in their own words what the experience has been like so far. Go to http://www.blogs.bucknell.edu/KatrinaRelief/ to get more details.
Tomorrow is a day off of work. We will visit a museum and hear from a Bucknell civil engineering graduate who has been working in the area. More news tomorrow.
Janice Butler
Director of Service-Learning
