In a corner of New Orleans, next to the infamous 17th Street canal breached during Hurricane Katrina almost two years ago, there are signs of hope and grief – and evidence that so much more needs to be done.
Volunteers who come to this city acquire some understanding of American history circa 19th century, as well lessons in failed 21st century domestic policy, while lending a hand in the enormous rebuilding process that daily confronts New Orleans residents.
On a recent Saturday morning, I accompanied a group of ACORN volunteers who gutted a small, one-story brick house in the Gentilly neighborhood. Fourteen were students from Elon University in North Carolina and a dozen were bloggers from all over the country who post and contribute to First Draft, a progressive blog, averaging 2,500 readers a day.
After a short orientation by Elliott, ACORN’s volunteer coordinator (don’t swing the crowbar wildly; position the ladder firmly before climbing on it; put the face mask over your nose and mouth), volunteers, ages 18-60s, went to work, tearing sheetrock off the walls and hauling it out to the street.
The house had hardly been touched since the storm, and the yard was completely overgrown. A mountain of debris and Christmas decorations were set out by the curb, along with lamps, a wheelchair, stereo, microwave, dining-room table and world globe. A black Fleetwood Cadillac was grounded beside the house, its tires completely flattened. In the back yard, a raised plastic swimming pool sat empty.
To see a slide show, click here.
The owners of the house, sisters Elizabeth and Ava Burnette, evacuated to Fort Worth, Texas, and New Iberia, La. Elizabeth is an entrepreneur with a disabled son who hopes to start a home for foster children. Ava is a nurse.
"I plan to return,” Elizabeth said decisively in a phone call to Fort Worth. “That’s our house, so we will be returning. It is very precious to me,” she said of the home where she and her sister were raised.
“The house is paid for and the taxes have been paid,” she said.
No one from ACORN’s Home Cleanout Program had yet called to say the house had been gutted but was infested with termites. I didn’t have the heart. It is uncertain whether it can be rebuilt.
The women’s father had been a landscape architect and designed many of the grounds around Dillard University, nearby. Their mother, Florence Burnett, 70, passed away last April from the stress of Katrina and dealing with FEMA, Elizabeth said.
“I send my love to those college students who helped clean my house,” she said.
The rest of the neighborhood is a mix of occupied and empty homes and FEMA trailers, still in use. It seemed uncertain whether the majority of residents would ever be back. Many were elderly, said Elizabeth, and died as a result of the stress caused by the hurricane.
Behind the house is a community garden begun in the 1960s, which is being cultivated. While the gutters began their work, I inspected the garden. Macon Fry, the community garden coordinator for Parkway Partners, the nation’s largest privately funded neighborhood gardens project, happened along in his truck, and greeted me with a smile. Before Katrina, there were 54 active community gardens and 22 have been re-established.
The garden is named for Meg Perry, a hurricane relief worker who died in a bus accident after Katrina. The garden sparkled with dew and a friendly, handmade sign welcomed visitors to become involved.
There are grapefruit, lemon, Mulberry and Satsuma trees, Fry said, and the gardeners are raising grass for the Gulf Coast Wetlands Restoration Project. They’re also hoping to start a commercial flower farm.
Lettuces grown there are distributed to people in transitional housing. Common Ground also brings children – “sprouts” – out to experience the gardens and pick fruit.
Common Ground rebuilt the greenhouse, made plant beds, compost bins and rain cisterns. “They’ve been sensational,” Fry said.
When the gutters took a break, a next-door neighbor brought 120 chicken wings to the volunteers for lunch. He lived in a FEMA trailer, but let them use his bathroom because there was no plumbing in the house they were gutting.
“I think what we did was for the neighbors,” said Scout, a First Draft blogger. “I don’t know if that house is salvageable, but the neighbors were happy because it was an eyesore and it was not safe.” Elizabeth said drug dealers had occupied the house for a time.
“Gutting is the first step. We are not even talking about rebuilding,” Scout said. “The pace is so slow."
Scout reminded the Elon students that residents of this neighborhood are similar to their parents. A Russian exchange student with the Elon group said her country thinks of the United States as rich, but this was shocking. “Your people don’t have homes,” she said.
“It is such a sad statement about America,” Scout said. “It’s incredible when you see other countries get it. Qatar gets it better than Joe Schmoe in Cincinnati.”
On her first trip, Scout visited the Ninth Ward, but the second time, she visited Lakeview, which was largely middle-class. There she spoke to a man working on his home. These were people who had families, careers, insurance and stable lives.
“We did everything right—we played by the rules,” the Lakeview man said. When Congress visited Lakeview, he was among the residents who tried to flag down their bus.
“I wanted those people from Congress to see my wedding picture,” the man said of mementos ruined in the floodwaters.
Scout, who has been blogging from Madison, Wis., since 2004, visited New Orleans for the first time in the late 1990s. “I thought at the time it was the most unique city in America.” She made her first post-Katrina trip in February 2006. After writing that she wanted to return to New Orleans, the blog funded her trip within 24 hours.
“You can fly in and take a cab to the French Quarter and everything doesn’t look that bad,” she said. The devastation is just a few blocks away and continues on for miles.
“I come from social work and I’ve seen bad things, but it’s almost like another planet, Scout said.
“The scope of the damage can’t be conveyed by news reports,” said Eddie, ACORN’s head volunteer who supervised the gutting project. “The sheer size of the damage is really overwhelming.”
That was the 24th weekend Eddie had spent gutting homes. He had gotten tired of complaining about the government and wanted to do something.
What originally appealed to Eddie about ACORN’s seven-day-a-week Home Cleanout Program was all it required of homeowners was to put their names on a list. “There were no qualifications to get on the list,” he said. “The hurricane didn’t qualify.”
ACORN’s program was ideal, he said. Fifteen to 20 volunteers can gut a house, he said. But if you don’t have many volunteers, you get as much done as you can. Gutting is something volunteers can effectively do without training, he said. It is a first start—both in clearing out the mold and damaged furnishings, as well as the memories, so people can begin their lives again, he said.
Eddie said the volunteers enjoy meeting someone from New Orleans who can help explain why residents don’t want to leave. Although he lives west of the city in La Place, which sustained little storm damage, he can explain the camaraderie of close-knit neighborhoods.
Sinfonian, who blogs from Florida, said he has a lot of emotional attachment for New Orleans, so he wanted to do something besides write about it.
“I was stunned and moved by what I saw,” Sinfonian said. “When you consider it has been 20 months, it’s very sobering.”
Sinfonian said the character and resilience of the people made an impression on him. “The spirit seemed to be alive,” he said. “That was motivating and heartening to me.”
Even though he has experienced hurricanes at close range, he didn’t see Florida communities with the same kind of shared connectedness.
“The gutting experience changed me,” Sinfonian said. It put other things in perspective because he saw people who had lost everything and weren’t complaining.
Athenae from Illinois, who also blogs on First Draft, had never met her fellow bloggers nor been to New Orleans before the gutting trip. “I came down with very few expectations, but seeing it had enormous impact,” she said. A journalist, Athenae focuses her First-Draft writings on moral values and ethics in journalism.
“New Orleans has a character that is unique and inspires devotion,” Athenae said.
“What offends me,” she said, is why people outside New Orleans say: Why should I care?”
“When we say we can survive without New Orleans, what’s next? These places are not expendable.” When some part of America is destroyed, then America must rebuild it. Otherwise, none of us are safe, she said of the absence of a national disaster response plan. We cannot so easily give up, she added.
“I have so much admiration for the people who live here,” Scout said. They know how to live there—good food, good music, good stories.
“How many cities are there that people would fight this hard to save? Scout asked.
To read blogging from the Katrina Krewe,click here.