The last few days really have been amazing. It is so hard to explain everything. The amount of devastation that has taken place in Louisiana is more than you can take in. Not a whole lot has been done to improve what was ruined and it has been 7 ½ months.
During the three days that we worked we gutted houses. Imagine your house basically being ruined. Water had been up to the roofs and what was left behind was not salvageable. When we walked into our house there was debris up to our knees. The ceiling had fallen in and water and dirt had turned to mud. Our task was to get EVERYTHING out of the house.
The first day we pretty much emptied out the house. This meant removing all the furniture and taking everything out. Then there was the carpet and all the drywall that had fallen and the instillation. When you add all of this up it really adds up. The pile outside kept getting larger and larger.
A pile from one of our houses
When you think of how much we have it is A LOT. This also made me think about the people who had lived in this home. We were going through an organization called Operation Blessing that does so much to help people. One of their ways of helping is organizing volunteers to help people who aren’t able to do the work themselves. I really enjoyed working for Operation Blessing and would like to work with them again.
By the end we were basically done with our house leaving only the foundation. We had to break up all the tile in a bathroom, remove a bathtub, take everything out of a kitchen, remove all the remaining drywall in the house and go around and take out all of the nails.
A typical day started at 6 am when the lights came on in the room we were sleeping in. We were lucky enough to be at a place that had bunk beds set up in an old grocery store in Slidell, LA. Mennonites volunteered by providing food for the volunteers. They sure know how to cook and we didn’t go hungry!
After breakfast we would load up our cars with our materials for the day. We didn’t rent the best vehicles for what we were doing. I got to drive a Dodge Magnum during the week and we loaded it up with a wheel barrel and all the tools we needed. We were off to our site by 8 am and worked until about 4 to get back to our base. We got to experience MREs for lunch. That is a Meal Ready to Eat issued by the military. One day we went to an Operation Blessing site where they gave out lunch to residents and the workers.
Here is my car!!
Our Group at lunch on Sunday
Each night we were tired when we got home. We did get to go into the city and see what New Orleans looks like now. I had never been there before but it was definitely a much different place than before. I had heard so much about Beignets and got to try one. They sure were yummy. bei·gnet- Southern U.S. in southern Louisiana, a square doughnut that has no hole in the center and covered in powered sugar. Try one sometime.
That is mostly what happened. I will post more pictures of the house my group worked on.
This picture is amazing. It was by our house if you look closely you can see that one house is on top of a truck and the other one is on a car. I can't believe what the storm did.
A house that was moved into the street by the storm
posted by Carrie @ 8:22 PM
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