My Experiences and thoughts on Hurricane Katrina

I've gone down to the gulf to volunteer three times so far and I might be making another trip down at the end of the summer. The first time I went down it was March of '06. That trip emotionally was the hardest of them all. The houses were still wet. You'd walk into a house and the carpet, the furniture, the walls were all completely soaked. Then of course everything that had gotten wet was also covered in mold, and not your everyday shower mold either. This mold was so thick it might as well have been purposely bred in a petri dish. Masks and suits were a must.  After we were outfitted with those, we would drag the entire contents of a persons house out into the street and leave it on the curb to be picked up. All of their memories gone in an instant. The ninth ward was even worse. Houses had shifted off their foundations. Some amazingly were left in one piece while others were broken in half and still more were completely destroyed. Their contents were scattered amongst their neighbor's yards. There was this one house I saw that had shifted off its foundation and cracked in half. A large chunk of the outer wall was gone and inside, as if on display, was a dining room table with the chairs still in place around it as if waiting to be set. The fan above was drooping down to meet it. There were cars too. One SUV in particular still haunts me. It was dark blue facing towards the levee. The seats were caked in dry mud. In the back seat a child's teddy bear still buckled in. I fear that people died in the car, trying to escape. All this because of levees not correctly built.

My second trip during January of '07 was a little more upbeat. Perhaps because it was made to a place called Ocean Springs, Mississippi. A place while still hard hit, did not sustain the same stagnant water that New Orleans did. It also did not get water up to the rooftops, because unlike New Orleans, it was not in the center of a bowl. Most of the repair work there was well underway. I spent my time there installing carpeting, painting, distributing food, and other such jobs. I got a chance to talk to some of the survivors during this trip. In fact, I met a little girl in the food distribution center. She was tiny, still a baby really with what looked to be her first pair of shoes. While her father went to meet with a caseworker to see if he was eligible for food, she stayed with me and we played with some toys. She was very shy and barely made a sound the whole time. After her father had gotten some food and they left, the caseworker came out and told me that they had almost lost her. She told me the story of how they had to climb on top of their van to escape the rising water. How she had slipped from his grip and fell in at just 9 months old. How his son and himself had jumped in after her. They were lucky. She was saved and they were rescued. For others, this was not so.

My third trip during March of '07 was back down to New Orleans. The houses once sopping wet were now dry. It was strange for me when I first entered a house. I picked up a cushion expecting it to be weighed down with water and instead it turned to dust in my hands. The houses we entered now were in the ninth ward and they had been left untouched until our presence. There were still refrigerators inside. Can you imagine that? Letting a refrigerator flood with water and then letting it sit for more than a year with all of its contents still inside. That is a smell I will always remember. The ninth ward looked different now. Most of the houses that had obvious structural damage were gone with only the foundations left to prove that they had once existed. There were cinderblocks that used to hold houses lined up in rows like gravestones marking a life lost. This last trip was lucky enough to end on a positive note though. We spent the last day painting a home and the family stopped by. They were an older couple and you could see on their faces the sadness in loosing everything but also the joy that they were about to be able to start over. They’ve moved back in by now.

So those were my trips. As for what I’ve learned, that’s a difficult thing to answer. Unfortunately I’ve learned a lot of bad things. I’ve learned what it is like to have a country fail its people, not only in the levees, but in the way they responded. Our country is more concerned about its war against terror than helping its own people and that greatly saddens me. For what is the point of fighting the "terrorists" if you have no people left to celebrate their defeat. I’ve also learned some good things though and I hope that they will triumph the bad. I’ve learned that a few dedicated people really can make a difference. There are a lot of people down there helping out. I just wish our government had the courage and the strength to do the same instead of hiding behind a war on foreign soil.

I’ve also learned how deceptive the news can be. It shows nothing of the destruction anymore. They just show Mardi Gras and Bourbon Street and tell the public that everything is back to normal. Don’t believe it though. Everything is not back to normal. Only that area is and that is because they were barely affected. I guess I’m officially an activist. I am going to continue to help out down in New Orleans at every opportunity and I will help out elsewhere if the need arises and I have the ability to do so. I’m actually studying pre-med right now with the intention of becoming a doctor and volunteering in countries that really need doctors. My mom thinks I’m crazy, but I just don’t see the point of living in the world if I am unable to make it a better place.