Thursday, September 29, 2005
I can’t show enough pictures or write enough to describe where we went today. Everyone sat around tonight well after others were (trying to be) asleep checking out each other's pics and vids. Much of it seemed the same, but mainly that's because there is so much of it.
Dana Skaggs and I took a pickup truck load of crutches and walkers to a makeshift medical clinic in St. Bernard Parish south of New Orleans. We went to Chalmette by way of Slidell where we picked up a doctor to go help in the clinic for the day. It took us two hours to get the few miles out of Slidell and onto the bridge across the southern tip of Lake Pontchartrain. Part of the wait was for a drawbridge, but a lot of it because sections of the I-10 bridge were taken out in the storm.
On the Slidell side of the lake, we saw mounds of stuff piled by the road. Stuff is the only way to describe what is there because in the mass of rubble ripped out of or off of peoples homes were trash cans, baby walkers, storage bins, shredded plywood, boats, cars, copiers, desks, paper... stuff. Certainly all of this is valuable stuff by itself, but is less than worthless now. Kinda like taking a nice $50.00 Filet Mignon, Caesar salad, and an imported wine, running it through a blender, and dumping it out on the edge of the table... In fact the scene was so unappetizing, we didn't eat our lunches we took.
This scene is several miles of State Route 11 from the bridge back into Slidell. It is everywhere you look in the populated areas within a mile or two from the lakeshore. There are also piles of donated clothes filling large sections of the parking lots of strip malls. A Baptist Church has two very large tents set up in their lawn with clothes piled 6' deep.
As bad as it was, the St. Bernard Parish side of the lake was worse. Some buildings are half collapsed from wind and tide and mud is everywhere drying into a fine dust with flakes of unknown composition and piles of sand. At first, it doesn't look as bad as Slidell because there isn't much that's been removed from the buildings. In fact we talked with an ambulance crew that was still working on a team that was removing bodies.
Dana only saw 1 door marked with a death, but on the way back home through New Orleans, we saw many houses and apartments that were not marked, or marked not entered or not checked. The ambulance crew who I so diligently asked what they had been doing, could barely tell me without breaking down and then only with the word "recovery" and this made me quite ashamed to have asked.
You really can't grasp the scale of this from our words or pictures. You can't see the vast neighborhoods that were all flooded and are uninhabitable from the vantage point of a highway overpass. You can't feel the dread as the highway drops down to ground level just past the Super Dome with its pealing roof. You can't experience the shock when route 11 descends into the flooded end of Slidell and you are all of the sudden confronted with the walls of debris on either side of the road. You can't feel the creaps as your foot sinks through the crust of that mud up to your ankle in a neighborhood where some of Katrina's victims still reside.
People have only been allowed back in there this week and only with a permit. The medical types are worried there will be a lot of injuries when people come back in, but the DMAT we visited (tight security for an end zone) wasn't getting many patients when we were there. Our supplies went to some local docs who had set up a temporary medical clinic in an office building in an oil refinery that was 1 of only 2 not flooded.
We left them with Lisa Ingargiola who had been working in the hospital the night of the hurricane. She came home and got some things when her shift was over and went to her father’s office to weather the storm. From there, she went by boat and has been there pretty much the whole time. She was happy to find her dog had survived 8 days in her house that had 5 feet of water.
Our other work crews made a major accomplishment today. The GitRDone Board was empty at 4:00. Now here are about 8 jobs posted for tomorrow thanks to Alisha's diligent telemarketing ;-) She followed up with some of the people who have been coming here for supplies and on needs they had listed on their intake forms to get specifics and basically spec the job.
Two 24' trucks left fully loaded at 5:00 this morning for Lake Charles Louisiana which was so badly hit hurricane Rita. They returned at 8:00 tonight. Dana Lewis reports conditions there are similar to what we have seen here. That area will need the same support of supplies and workers as this one does.
I met William Watson, a social studies teacher here this evening. He's been helping out in the warehouse yesterday and today. His family has been away in Austin since the Hurricane and since school starts here again on Monday he's going to get them back this weekend. They were fortunate in only having a few lost shingles and piece of facia on their house, but many of his neighbors have a lot of damage. Out here away from the flooding by the lake it's mainly a pine forest with houses in it. Some of these trees are 2ft thick and hit very heavy when they fell doing most of the damage.
The school board is going to determine whether there will be layoffs after they see how many kids come to school in the district now. Some will have left and will leave as parents find new jobs out of the area. Others may come in from more damaged areas.
As is the way, there is a change taking place today that will effect those of you coming next week. The need for pickup of items at the church here is dwindling this week, and so to is the supply. Tammany will continue to take and distribute food, water, and other supplies, but will not need "customer service" or have packers to build food boxes or "MREs". MREs are food boxes that do not need cooking or preparation and are in easy to open packages. Each box feeds a family of 4 for a day.
The optimum support those of us in the world can give the people here is to ship food pre-boxed for delivery to a family like it is being repackaged here. This would be much more efficient and adjust the workload back to the sending community where it is much more convenient for people to volunteer.
A note on what not to donate is in order. I saw first hand today how clothes are distributed if at all. There is no easy distribution method for donated clothes, nor stuffed animals, or kids toys. We've seen some strange things donated this week: a bin of miscellaneous shoes, a bicycle, long sleeved flannel shirts, things that are really in the way of getting people fed, hydrated, and cleaned up. Donating a pack of Wal-Mart gift cards serves the same purpose, allows for choice, takes up significantly less space, and is much cheaper to ship.
So here's whats needed:
Dana Skaggs and I took a pickup truck load of crutches and walkers to a makeshift medical clinic in St. Bernard Parish south of New Orleans. We went to Chalmette by way of Slidell where we picked up a doctor to go help in the clinic for the day. It took us two hours to get the few miles out of Slidell and onto the bridge across the southern tip of Lake Pontchartrain. Part of the wait was for a drawbridge, but a lot of it because sections of the I-10 bridge were taken out in the storm.
On the Slidell side of the lake, we saw mounds of stuff piled by the road. Stuff is the only way to describe what is there because in the mass of rubble ripped out of or off of peoples homes were trash cans, baby walkers, storage bins, shredded plywood, boats, cars, copiers, desks, paper... stuff. Certainly all of this is valuable stuff by itself, but is less than worthless now. Kinda like taking a nice $50.00 Filet Mignon, Caesar salad, and an imported wine, running it through a blender, and dumping it out on the edge of the table... In fact the scene was so unappetizing, we didn't eat our lunches we took.
This scene is several miles of State Route 11 from the bridge back into Slidell. It is everywhere you look in the populated areas within a mile or two from the lakeshore. There are also piles of donated clothes filling large sections of the parking lots of strip malls. A Baptist Church has two very large tents set up in their lawn with clothes piled 6' deep.
As bad as it was, the St. Bernard Parish side of the lake was worse. Some buildings are half collapsed from wind and tide and mud is everywhere drying into a fine dust with flakes of unknown composition and piles of sand. At first, it doesn't look as bad as Slidell because there isn't much that's been removed from the buildings. In fact we talked with an ambulance crew that was still working on a team that was removing bodies.
Dana only saw 1 door marked with a death, but on the way back home through New Orleans, we saw many houses and apartments that were not marked, or marked not entered or not checked. The ambulance crew who I so diligently asked what they had been doing, could barely tell me without breaking down and then only with the word "recovery" and this made me quite ashamed to have asked.
You really can't grasp the scale of this from our words or pictures. You can't see the vast neighborhoods that were all flooded and are uninhabitable from the vantage point of a highway overpass. You can't feel the dread as the highway drops down to ground level just past the Super Dome with its pealing roof. You can't experience the shock when route 11 descends into the flooded end of Slidell and you are all of the sudden confronted with the walls of debris on either side of the road. You can't feel the creaps as your foot sinks through the crust of that mud up to your ankle in a neighborhood where some of Katrina's victims still reside.
People have only been allowed back in there this week and only with a permit. The medical types are worried there will be a lot of injuries when people come back in, but the DMAT we visited (tight security for an end zone) wasn't getting many patients when we were there. Our supplies went to some local docs who had set up a temporary medical clinic in an office building in an oil refinery that was 1 of only 2 not flooded.
We left them with Lisa Ingargiola who had been working in the hospital the night of the hurricane. She came home and got some things when her shift was over and went to her father’s office to weather the storm. From there, she went by boat and has been there pretty much the whole time. She was happy to find her dog had survived 8 days in her house that had 5 feet of water.
Our other work crews made a major accomplishment today. The GitRDone Board was empty at 4:00. Now here are about 8 jobs posted for tomorrow thanks to Alisha's diligent telemarketing ;-) She followed up with some of the people who have been coming here for supplies and on needs they had listed on their intake forms to get specifics and basically spec the job.
Two 24' trucks left fully loaded at 5:00 this morning for Lake Charles Louisiana which was so badly hit hurricane Rita. They returned at 8:00 tonight. Dana Lewis reports conditions there are similar to what we have seen here. That area will need the same support of supplies and workers as this one does.
I met William Watson, a social studies teacher here this evening. He's been helping out in the warehouse yesterday and today. His family has been away in Austin since the Hurricane and since school starts here again on Monday he's going to get them back this weekend. They were fortunate in only having a few lost shingles and piece of facia on their house, but many of his neighbors have a lot of damage. Out here away from the flooding by the lake it's mainly a pine forest with houses in it. Some of these trees are 2ft thick and hit very heavy when they fell doing most of the damage.
The school board is going to determine whether there will be layoffs after they see how many kids come to school in the district now. Some will have left and will leave as parents find new jobs out of the area. Others may come in from more damaged areas.
As is the way, there is a change taking place today that will effect those of you coming next week. The need for pickup of items at the church here is dwindling this week, and so to is the supply. Tammany will continue to take and distribute food, water, and other supplies, but will not need "customer service" or have packers to build food boxes or "MREs". MREs are food boxes that do not need cooking or preparation and are in easy to open packages. Each box feeds a family of 4 for a day.
The optimum support those of us in the world can give the people here is to ship food pre-boxed for delivery to a family like it is being repackaged here. This would be much more efficient and adjust the workload back to the sending community where it is much more convenient for people to volunteer.
A note on what not to donate is in order. I saw first hand today how clothes are distributed if at all. There is no easy distribution method for donated clothes, nor stuffed animals, or kids toys. We've seen some strange things donated this week: a bin of miscellaneous shoes, a bicycle, long sleeved flannel shirts, things that are really in the way of getting people fed, hydrated, and cleaned up. Donating a pack of Wal-Mart gift cards serves the same purpose, allows for choice, takes up significantly less space, and is much cheaper to ship.
So here's whats needed:
- Water
- Food (best if each box is packaged to provide meals to a family for a day)
- Personal care items (out of deodorant and shampoo)
- Clearing brush and small trees to the curb for removal
- Removing wet material from "mucking out" houses (crews have been largely made up of women ;-)
- Rebuilding houses (Plumbing, Electrical, Roofing, Drywall, etc.)
- Finding people in need (you'll hear about Mark McGiffin's project tomorrow)
- Finding neighborhoods in need (and about Amy Fox's)
- Cooking for volunteers
- Trucking supplies to where they are needed in the Penske rentals (my personal favorite)
# posted by John McGuire @ 1:06 AM 
