Tuesday

We arrived at camp after 7 a.m., this time feeling much more familiar with our fellow volunteers. They're a good group. I learned I'm working with an architect from San Diego, a special ed teacher from DC who's getting married in five weeks, and four people, including the metro editor and a/e editor, from the Star Ledger, the "voice of New Jersey." Talk about a coincidence.

There are also about 20 people from CDW, the computer company from Chicago. All tech guys. And a church group from Bloomington, Ill. All these people are assigned to other homes but we share the same bus.

The top photo is us arriving on site. Next is Rob following our team captain and Monica hauling in the cooler. The home at the bottom is a home across the street from our own.

So I learned that Rob and Monica found a dead cat in the kitchen sink yesterday but didn't tell me. That's kind of ironic considering the cat love I posted yesterday. The cat was under mud, spread out, dead, one half in the left sink, one half in the right sink. Today as they carried out the sink to the pile, they both mewed to me and pointed to the stuck fluff on top of it. Thanks guys!

The snake's buddy returned. Rob saw it. Before we called the fire chief, we tried finding/killing it ourselves. I held the light -- isn't that brave? We tore out the sink and remaining cabinets but it escaped our grasp, just like a sneaky snake would.

The fire chief came out and hung out with us talking snakes. Here he is to the left, another fire guy to the right (he assured me he was scared of snakes too and that made me feel less than a little, little girl):

Then he returned when we were eating lunch:

He was probably the smartest and kindest guy we met down here in this process. Plus he had a really cool Cajun accent. He thanked us over and over ("if you think you are doing good work — DOUBLE THAT!," he said) and then shed some light on the situation. He explained that after the flood hit, contractors set unprecedented fees to gut homes, something like $4 a foot, which gets up there in to the several thousands. Now you may have that kind of money to get that job done. But then you need more contractors to put up sheetrock, trim, paint, install electric, plumbing and then you need money for appliances, furniture, maybe a new car, etc. With gutting, all you have is a foundation and you need to dress the spine. And going hand-in-hand with the price gouging is the beaurocracy of actually getting the FEMA money (scammers haven't helped this process) and the low balling of the major insurance companies. So in effect, most of these people are trapped in a tangled web of capitalism at its worse and limitless government red tape.

I also learned that Habitat has already gutted over 1,100 homes in this area (my number in a previous post was completely off). Their goal is 5,000 by June but that is likely not to happen due to lack of volunteers and FEMA unplugging the work camp that month. The New Orleans branch of Habitat was originally a tiny outpost and I have that sense that, although organized and grateful, they are overwhelmed.

He said he expects only 50 percent of the neighborhood to return. Many for sale signs have these homes going for 45k, average, a cut and run. Some homes have people who have returned and, as symbol, have planted grass and are gardening. It's a weird sight. Rubble next to a trimmed lawn, the only real green amid the junk grass everywhere else.

The fire guy said on the day of the flood he was angry having to rescue those people who did not evacuate. Why should I risk my life to save your own, he said. Later, when he thought about it, he realized that many people did not have the funds to stay in a hotel for weeks, others didn't have reliable cars to take them further than the next county over, and there were many elderly residents that had no one and nowhere to go. I think a lot of us find this difficult to understand because we have families and friends and nice, working cars. Not necessarily the case here, or anywhere.

He pointed to his house, one block over. Friends of his helped gut it and it took an entire week. Right now he and his wife are living in a trailer, his adult kids are on their own.

Today's work was very strange. I did things I never ever thought I would ever do. These duties included: demoing a teenage girl's closet and removing the racks of clothes and drawers of underwear and socks, all submerged in the stinky stew water. I also went outside and sledged an air conditioner to make it go through the wall and onto the floor. That killed me. I cut a rug (not danced) with a hand blade. I shoveled insulation and drywall for hours.

Rob went into the attic. Here's what it looked like in the morning before his arrival:

See all those belongings up there? All drenched. The water went up to the roof. It was tough to imagine looking at these houses and thinking that, during that flood, only the very top of these roofs were visible.

Rob went up and handed us down things you'd expect in an attic: Xmas decorations (lights, a tree, a dozen outdoor candy canes), mementos, furniture, pounds and pounds of mardi gras beads, boxes of Barbies, glassware, etc. At the end of the day, Don the architect went up. He found an entire container of precious glassware that was filled with water. To get the water out, we handed him buckets, he poured them with water and lowered them back, and then handed us containers of glass. Some people unwrapped the glass and set them aside, I helped bring stuff down from him. Which meant getting an occassional shower of chemical swamp bath.

I guess being in the attic was nastier than being on the first floor. Rob said that he could see a two-ton freezer sitting on top of another neighbor's roof.

We encountered more animals, two cute frogs watched us work. And a lizard hung out in an outdoor shed while we ate. I'm sure by now all three are resting in the stomach of that snake that got away.

By the end of the day our debris pile probably tripled. There was no longer room to dump the wheelbarrows. It probably takes a few weeks to construct a house, but two days to tear it apart.

Here's Rob and I at the end of the day, ready to collapse.


When we got back to the camp, our first sight was the Rent A Cops. These guys are now the collective joke of the volunteers. Their real title should be Rest A Cops. Two of them were planted in a golf cart next to piles of 2X4s, I guess protecting the wood from the terrorists. Or maybe the snakes. Want to hear an astounding fact? Today I learned that each of these guys earn $500/day from FEMA. That's $500 per day per Rest A Cop. So, in essence, money spent for one of these guys to sit on his ass for eight hours could pay for a company to gut an entire house, which would put local people to work and get things moving more quickly.

But it's not. The money's being handed out by our government to companies whose sole practice is to capitalize on human tragedy. If it's so obvious here, I can only imagine what it's like in Iraq with Halliburton and the like.

Tomorrow I think we have to rip out the duct work and then we finish this house. Sometime during the day tomorrow we'll get to a new one! I can't believe that on Monday morning we arrived to find what was essentially a six room house caked in mud and we cleared it to the studs and cleaned it out enough you could see the floors. There is certainly a sense of accomplishment.

I would have more photos but my camera is acting funky. I'm either going to buy a new one tonight or get lucky and it'll fix itself. Who am I kidding. Anyway, more photos tomorrow. Tonight I'm going to hang out Uptown or maybe go hit the Quarter. All the volunteers are planning to get dinner Thursday somewhere. But tonight, it's pork at the Reyes.