Bucknell Katrina Recovery Team

Tomorrow is the big day! I am so anxious just to get on the plane and find out what flying is like. Plus I am wondering what New Orleans will look like since the hurricane last year. We already know that 100% of Saint Bernard’s Parish was flooded and only 10% of the population has returned.

This was our first day of demolition. We boarded our bus this morning at 7 a.m. What we saw was a bit overwhelming. Our house hadn't been touched since the hurricane. This is the case with a lot of the houses here. Not sure why. Our crew leader told us that some of the people just can't deal with this disaster. Once we moved out all the furniture it was time to tear the inside walls down. The walls are covered with black mold. Once the drywall is taken out then out comes the insulation. For over a year a variety of insects have lived in these walls. Some of us were freaked out by the cockroaches! Man, they are big down here! By 3pm what once was a front yard turned into a mountain of debris. Leaving now for the French Quarter. More later.

Barb

Monday, December 18 and another house gutted. What a great feeling for all of us! As I mentioned before, the 25 of us split into two teams. So, really, two more houses have been gutted. I haven't had the opportunity to meet any of the owners of the houses that we have gutted, but today we did talk to the neighbors next door. How appreciative these people are for any help we can give them. At first the neighbors thought that we got paid to do the work. When we told them that we actually paid to come on the trip they were really surprised! They told us about the evacuation and having to wait weeks till they could even get home.

Hello from Violet, LA!

Today was a great day. We got to finish our house this morning! It is so rewarding to start with a house that was 0% and finish it completely. What I mean by 0% is that the house had nothing done to it since Katrina. Yesterday some of the girls on my team discovered pictures and mementos of the family that gave us some idea about them. Today Hillary was able to call them with the good news that their house was cleaned up. Unfortunately she got their voice mail. I can only imagine how relieved the family was knowing that their home was ready to be rebuilt. Later this morning we moved on to our 3rd house. This house is going to be a challenge. It is a huge house with two stories. Again it's a house that is 0%. Water marks are still evident on the walls. This home had 10' of water inside. Now it has 6" of mud inside. The mud is caked on the floors like bricks. Our team had to use a pitch fork to loosen it. We were all amazed at the end of the day at how much progress we had made. Already we have 2 of the biggest rooms cleared and tomorrow we'll start the other rooms.

On the bright side it's warm and sunny here!

Today was a disappointing day for the team. It started raining late last night and continued all day. Because of the weather we couldn't go out to the worksite. All of us had hopes of finishing this enormous house before we had to return to Bucknell tomorrow. By far this is the largest house we have tried to gut. Even though we didn't get a chance to finish the house the strides we made yesterday are remarkable. One room in particular was used as a workout area. Not only were the furniture and belongings thrown about by the water, undernearth it all was a huge treadmill. What a great sense of satisfaction in completing that room. Then on to the next one. The most difficult part of this house was the long narrow hallway. It was only wide enough to fit a wheelbarrow. The wheelbarrow would be filled then backed out the hallway to be dumped outside. Another obstacle was trying to condense the huge pile of debris in the front yard. The guys constructed a ramp made of doors in order to pile the debris. My guess would be that we had gutted a 0% house, one that had never been cleaned since the flooding, to 75%. What an accomplishment for a team that most of us have never dealt with such a disaster.