Touched

You can’t understand unless you’ve seen it with your own eyes. You can’t believe it unless you lived through. Understanding the scope is impossible. The only thing you can do in grit your teeth, dig in your heels, and refuse to be forgotten; swept away by the shifting tide of public consciousness. I recently spent two weeks down along the Gulf Coast, and even during the last day I had trouble having the whole event sink in. It’s because I didn’t see the terrible events unfold. New Orleans flooded over a period of several days. Biloxi, MS, our home base during the trip, flooded in mere three hours. Minus the storm surge, the effects of the category 4 hurricane would have been devastating: trees down, roofs ripped off, damage to any thing exposed. The storm surge was the keystone of the disaster. It hit during high tide. There’s a normal 8 to 12 foot variability in the tides, yet it hit at its peak. Coupled with the storm surge, water rose nearly 30 feet along the hardest-hit, low lying (if you’ve ever been to the South, then you know that everything is low-lying) areas. The architecture and low-income tier of the residents ill-suits flood damage prevention. Their houses are one-story and small. Damage to residences was extensive. Not just to the places that we’ve heard about in the news, or to the places that we saw, but to every house in every town along the Gulf Coast that was hit. I was part of the crew that worked on the interiors, or as it is more properly known as: demolition. Basically, we took the house down to its studs so that its foundations could be demolded before the rebuilding could took place. To do this we used crowbars of all sizes and weights, hammers, shovels, chisels, and sledgehammers. It still feels weird to open doors without my trusted behemoth of a crowbar. Our first day we were exposed right away to our task: two houses to demo. It’s amazing to think how tepid we were when we first started – small sings of the sledgehammer, paying careful attention to minute details, wrinkling our nose at the smell, using masks other than the effective and form-fitting 3M masks. The smell was the worst. Every house has a smell – a microcosm of this is dorm rooms. No two student rooms smell the same – even frat basements have distinct odors. In the aftermath of Katrina, all the houses we worked on smelled the same. It had the same mud caked to the floor, the same mess created in the homes, the same flood water found in the refrigerators, cupboards, and lamps. The same 3-month old rotting food strewn about as these people’s lives were so rudely interrupted. The same cockroaches half-dead after we removed their perches, the same sickly geckos half-heartedly trying to make an escape. Only one house was different. There was shit in that one. Everyday we worked, we looked at these trashed houses – insurmountable mountains that needed to be climbed. 7 hours later, whatever paralyzed frozen personality that remained in the house was gone – there was only shades of wood and mold, and a giant pile of trash on the side of the streets. A layer of ruined scrapbooks under layers of their ruined furniture under their ruined walls. People’s lives strewn on the sidewalks in town, courtesy of us, damned by the storm surge. The last structure we did, our eleventh, the elderly owner and her daughter stopped by to see if anything could be saved. This house had been particularly trashed – flood water was found in all sorts of interesting places. By the time the family arrived, we done a good job cleaning out the front room (the kitchen and dining room). Before the owner entered, I had grabbed one of the two items she wanted to keep – a metal snowman that the water came a few inches short of grabbing. The second item was a trunk in under her bed that contained Christmas ornaments that she a had bought the previous year. She wanted to celebrate a normal Christmas. The owner walked in. She was disturbed at the sight, but fine. Her grown daughter followed; she had not been home since the storm. She let out a scream, quickly swallowed by her hands. No one else heard it – only I did. I was close to her. I will never forget that cry. The trunk was found, but its contents were ruined. The owner began to cry too. Personality had just come back to the house, and it was horrified at what that bastard storm did to it. After the family left, we finished our work in silence, preparing the house so that it would be renewed. The owner wasn’t going to come back – she couldn’t afford to.
Biloxi is fortunate to have a coordinated relief effort – hundreds of volunteers have helped out at all levels, abiding by the Hands On’s mantra of asking people ‘how can we help you?’. Many aspects of the town has been helped, although there is still much to go. The casinos, which bring countless millions of dollars into the state of Mississippi, will move on land now, and people will lose their homes.
Not every town is so lucky. My crew spent two days in Waveland, a town nearby. It took a day or two for the initial aid workers to ever reach the city- the roads going in were covered by miles of downed trees. It was there that we saw the best and worst of Southern culture. A meal at Christian church affiliated center (which shall remain nameless in the article) exhibited the selective relief that some organizations are giving to communities. Waveland was mostly black, yet very nearly all the people being helped were white. They preached and sang of the virtues of Jesus and Armageddon, which would save all of these people of this affiliation and kill the rest. God bless us when the trumpets of Gabriel blow. When they made us tell them what religious organization we were part of, they nearly kicked us out at the spot. When we were done eating, we were kicked out. One of our group was subjected to the opinions of one elderly, faithful churchgoer. God bless the hurricane, he said, it killed all those n*****rs in New Orleans. It got even better when the heathens began shooting each other. Now, all those schoolteachers are upset about all those n*****rs being shipped into their schools because they’re uneducated and they’ll have to change the curriculum for them! It was nearly too much for me, especially that night when I talked to two elderly white women who lost their home, were living in a tent because FEMA hadn’t given them a trailer yet, and their daughter that’s living with them was expecting a child in two weeks. God bless that hurricane. However, that next day I met one of the nicest men that I have ever met. By some miracle, his street escaped the surge. Soon after the storm, he was helping cook and feed many in his neighborhood, happy to be a help. Previous volunteers had helped out sister, so he said he would feed us. With only a few hours of ahead notice, he cooked one of the most amazing meals I had ever tried. Believe me – I’ve had some excellent meals (thanks Mom, my girlfriend and her sister!). He was kind, devoutly Christian, and totally welcoming of us. He even invited us to his small church, which was also blessed with a very talented gospel choir, of which this man was a part of. Southern culture was dichotomized on this trip. Admittedly, I’ve had a sheltered life growing up in secular Maine suburbia, but still, I believe I saw the absolute depth and greatest heights of the religious South.
Overall, by the time we left, a member of our team totaled the work we had done: 11 houses, $6000 of work done. It wasn’t a few of us changing the world, but we were making a world of change to a few people. It was community service at its best and most-needed form.
Lastly, I’d like to mention that community service is always needed, whether it gets the press or not. This disaster does not warrant acute relief. Towns will need help rebuilding for many years. However, there are other parts of society that need our help. The work required may not be as sexy as disaster relief, but it is just as needed in some parts. Worldwide and at home. Chronic problems need perpetual work done on them, and unfortunately these problems do not inspire the same and appropriate impetus of the relief work that has gone on since the hurricane. Martin Luther King once said, “The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in the moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands in times of challenge and controversy.” I believe this to be true, but not encompassing of human character. The mettle is tested when in these situations, but it leaves out service. It is in times of comfort and convenience that we should most focus on bringing others to us. However many are already helping in some way, there are countless more who are not. An addict needing help overcoming an addiction, a family is does on their luck and have lost their home. These small disasters can be relieved by the more comfortable. Margaret Edelman once said, “Service is the rent for living.” In a perfect world, this should be true.

I am now trying to come to grip to being back in my comfortable home in Maine, living with my stable family and close friends. After coming back, it has been hard to forget what I have seen, done, and experienced. There are terribly strong emotions that have bubbled up: guilt, sadness, resentment. I felt my inner self come close to breaking while I was on the trip – after the house with the family, every time I closed my eyes, everytime I was asked how my day was, I always thought of that one cry. To me, that is what Gulf Coast is. It is shocked, pained, turned about, temporarily lost but still altogether assured of its course. But others cannot know this. It is strange feeling emotions emerge without the control that we are all so used to having, and it will take time until I finally come to grips to my time as a Hurricane Katrina relief worker. ~ZS