This Mess We're In

St. Bernard Parish after Katrina

Today 5 members of my team did an independent service project gutting houses in St. Bernard Parish, or should I say part of a house? We successfully removed all the mud, debris, and rotting drywall from the garage and part of the kitchen. We also took off all the doors and busted out a couple of windows for ventilation. We made a 5' X 20' pile of gutted house and we barely made a dent. Mud, broken toys, dishes, rusted tools, photo paper with the pictures washed off, rotten wood, toothpaste, paint, and everything was ruined. The water line went partway up the roof and all the insulation had fallen in causing things that were stored in the attic to fall into the water. The house was littered with pieces of Mardi gras beads and Christmas decorations, everything caked with a foot of mud. I had to go to the bathroom, and as I walked up the block to the port-a-potty, I had this eerie feeling. House, after house, after house, empty with 30 feet of garbage in front of it, broken windows, doll parts, ice chests and clothes hanging from the limbs of trees all cloaked with this dead silence in the middle of the day. It was like a scene from Dawn of the Dead, but it's real. So many parts of New Orleans are uninhabitable until gutting and inspection are completed, and no matter how many times I say it, people don't realize how bad it is here. It looks like zombies took over the city and left it for 20 AmeriCorps members to pick up. I wish I had a solution, or the power to implement it. For now, I'll just approach it like I did the house: one house, one room, one square foot, one shovel-full at a time.