Driving through the Parish on my way to the volunteer camp where I was being housed, it looked as though the water had just receeded the day before. The vast majority of businesses were closed; for every gas station that was open, four were closed. For every little dive bar that was open, two were closed; I didn't see a single grocery store open. As far as I could tell, if you needed something, your one choice was Walgreens. Banks were closed. The local hospital was boarded up. The police station/court house was surrounded by razor-wire'd fencing. Most every house I drove by had everything in it tossed about, looking as though they did nine months ago. Some streets had piles of debris blocking half of the street.
is not an exaggeration of what I saw on a daily basis. In a nutshell, it's nine months after 99.999% of homes in the parish were destroyed [30 out of 27,000 survived] and it looks like the place has not been touched. I stayed at what was called Camp Premier for the first part of my trip. Camp Premier was a FEMA-run tent city that was set up initially to house National Guard troops and later came to house volunteers, run by Americorps and holding Habitat for Humanity and other such organizations. It was a fairly decently run place; food was always ample and decent enough, there was running water for showers and toliets and sinks, there was a laundry service and the tents all had electricity and air conditioning. So, while it was not the best, it was comfortable enough. However, FEMA was pulling funding for the camp as of June 1, 2006.
Americorps had found a location to move the camp to, about 7 miles down the road. It was a school building that had been flooded, and due to the lack of people living in the Parish [there were some in FEMA trailers, but definitley nowhere near the amount of people living there before Katrina] it wasn't operating as a school... or anything else for that matter. So, the Parish government said it'd be cool to set up the volunteer base camp there, and it was named Camp Hope. It was going to be run by Americorps with support from the Parish government, and I believe this arrangement was set up over a month before I arrived. Well, when I got down there at the beginning of last week, they told us the camp was no where near ready to accept people on Thursday, so we [we meaning all of the volunteers] spent Monday and Tuesday building the camp, instead of out doing what we'd gone down there for, which was to gut houses. As it turns out, I was one of the few volunteers who knew how to build things, so I stayed at that camp through Thursday.
As part of my construction, I was a part of a team that was pointed towards what used to be a stage and told to build showers. By dumb luck, the team included three other guys who knew a bit more than average so within a day we were able to have the basic design going; no plumbers or carpenters were really around to help us [at some point, some people were around to give advice, but it was by and large on our own]. While all the volunteers were at the camp on Monday and Tuesday, we got a lot done because we had motivated people who were willing and able to learn how to perform a task in support of our goals. However, on Wednesday and Thursday, the only volunteers around were those with some construction skills and they were spread out among all the projects going on. So, the unskilled labor force was to be filled by Americorps people, about 80 in all. As such, I found myself with a couple of Americorps teams, each of 10, to lead. Without going into any great detail, Americorps is a program sort of like the Peace Corps; sign up for a 10 month term and at the end, come out with $5k towards school, earned by volunteering. During your time in Americorps, all expenses are paid and such, so that $5k is pocketed. And, for the only paid people on that site, Americorps people are, in general, the most worthless group of people I've ever supervised. Many of them found it too difficult to put up plywood on frames to make walls; caulking was out of the scope of their abilities; and they were all lazy as hell. I think the story I have that most epitomizes this experience with the Americorps people is as follows:
As part of the plumbing, we were using PVC. We needed to assemble 6"x4" T's for the drainage, and so we found a group of 5 Americorps people to glue them for us; there was like 30 that needed to be glued. Like, for a group of 5 it's a 45 minute job. 3 hours later, we were breaking for lunch and went out by the Americorps people. They were finishing up, thankfully. PVC pipe gluing is a two part process; first, one applies an alcohol based primer and on top of that, the actual glue. As my team was breaking for lunch, the Americorps people had an open can of primer and we watched one of the [very overweight] girls light a cigarette. We pointed out that maybe it wouldn't be a prudent idea to have a cigarette two feet away from flammable primer, and she responded by scooting like another 18 inches away. Brilliant. We moved elsewhere for our lunch. And, at the end of the day when we got a chance to check their work, half of it was either done insufficiently or incorrectly.
When we moved into Camp Hope from Camp Premier, there was basically nothing functioning. No working toliets or sinks, so it was Porta-Potty time. Our showers were nowhere near finished, so we needed to borrow some portable shower trailers from FEMA. Minimal electricity coming from residential quality generators. A/C in some places. It was basically a roof over our heads. But, the food was good [a bunch of hippies were cooking for us!]
At the end of the week, I decided I needed to go out into the field and at least see what I was supposed to be doing, just for the experience. It was a shocking experience; the house was literally destroyed. The stuff was tossed about everywhere, ceilings collapsed, etc. The smell was horrible, and black mold was growing on surface after surface. It was really... eye opening taking a house that people had lived in for a while down to studs; their home literally in a pile at the curb. And there was 27,000 houses all in the same situation. Here we are living in a country that can obliterate another country inside of a month and begin restructuring its government and rebuilding it, yet a county within its own borders is highly neglected. Not only by the government, but by its people. However, I must say, there was no coverage of the St. Bernards Parish situation. I didn't know 27k homes were destroyed in one county until someone I knew went down there and told me about it. The news coverage seemed centered around the 9th Ward, which, as far as I could tell, didn't have it quite as bad as St. Bernards.
Furthermore, regarding the news coverage, I heard a lot of things from people [cab drivers, mainly] that I hadn't heard elsewhere. For instance, right where I was working there was a 100m barrel oil spill as a result of negligence in following flood procedures; the part of the county it effected was flood damaged, but not destroyed. However, the oil spill destroyed those homes. And, as is generally the case, the oil company is doing its best to minimize claims against it. Another example of an unreported thing that I found absurd: A cab driver pointed out something to me and told me it was a pumping station that could pump 1,000,000 gallons of water a minute. That number sounds a bit high to me, but, damn, it was a huge pump and I bet it could do a lot. The cabbie said that it was there in case a levee broke/was topped and it could pump away a lot of the water, thereby saving the area from substantial property damage. However, when Katrina was coming, it was evac'd and left dormant.
In the end, I feel.. apalled that in this, the richest and most advanced country in the world, there's a disaster affecting hundreds of thousands of people yet the outreach from citizens is minimal [sure, they tossed money at the Red Cross/etc, but money alone can't solve the problem] and that the proper protection and planning wasn't in place. Nobody can stop a natural disaster from occuring; but one can plan for it. I don't think anybody thought that a hurricane wouldn't hit New Orleans, but I'll be damned if the city and the area around it was prepared.
If anybody is interested in volunteering, I'll point ya to http://habitat-nola.org/ or post here, and stuff. And comments/etc.
Japan is wiser and smarter, and has cooler gadgets.