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Rolls Royce
The director of the county historical society parks his Rolls Royce outside his FEMA trailer on the block-from-the-beach lot where his house was entirely swept away. He says if he had a dollar for everyone who's taken a photo of his car, he'd be ready to rebuild!
Lake Providence, La. - Bay St. Louis, Miss.
7,756 miles to date
631 miles this leg Whew. We hardly know where to start. Nearly all of the last two weeks was spent in Hurricane Katrina’s destruction zone, and although nearly nine months have passed since this “storm of the century,” it’s mind-boggling to see for ourselves much
more effort the recovery is going to take.
As traveling eyewitnesses, we will attempt to describe here what you’re not necessarily hearing on the news every day, although the struggles are daily for the people who are staying and rebuilding the Gulf Coast. We should not forget them, nor should we let the media’s lack of interest in what will perhaps be a decade-long story allow them to slip from our minds.
We were especially touched by our experience in Port Townsend’s
sister city, Bay St. Louis, where we stayed put for the last 10 days and helped out on a hodgepodge of volunteer projects that opened our eyes to the details of “disaster relief.” Sometimes the most helpful tasks we could perform were the most mundane - like installing our host’s new mailbox or
Upholstered Chair
We never thought we'd be cleaning hurricane-deposited mud from antique furniture with a toothbrush, but this was a real need for one Bay St. Louis family. Their furniture had to be cleaned and stored before their house could be re-drywalled. properly connecting her DVD player or just cooking her dinner - but they freed up her and others to focus on more pressing details, like paying their bills or placing the door order for their house remodel or taking time to call a friend on the cell phone (no one has land lines anymore).
We leave Bay St. Louis humbled by the generosity, gratitude and fortitude of its citizens. This town will have a special place in the heart of our trip.
Of course, New Orleans gets most of the press, and it is in much better shape than the small towns along the Mississippi coast. Our four-day visit there felt almost normal, as we stayed with relatives in an unflooded neighborhood of Metairie, strolled the largely undamaged French Quarter, and attended the annual New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival - the hurricane didn’t put a dent in the music down here!
Then again, the guest bath in our hosts’ two-bathroom house still wasn’t working after the storm damaged something in the plumbing and all the plumbers in a 200-mile radius had more pressing work to do. A shortage of skilled labor is one of the roadblocks
Habitat Wall
This is the wall that Shelly and Kathy from Wisconsin built -- to replace a wall that had to be shifted slightly so the tub would fit in this volunteer-built Habitat for Humanity house in Waveland, Miss. to rebuilding. We interviewed a contractor in Bay St. Louis who got creative and is partnering with a California firm to manufacture panelized homes in a “Creole Bungalow” style that he can quickly assemble after the pieces arrive on a truck from the west coast. Check out his company,
Southern Pre-Built Homes.
Note to construction workers, plumbers, electricians, even boatbuilders: Consider relocating, even temporarily, to the Gulf Coast. The need for your skills is so great, and you would be amply rewarded in terms of money and gratitude. True, housing is at a premium, but if you’re a Port Townsend Shed Boy, you’ll feel right at home!
The overall pace of debris clean-up has been another roadblock to rebuilding. It’s been just 60-90 days since the tree-top-high piles of shattered building debris were cleared from Bay St. Louis neighborhoods. The amount of debris estimated to have been removed from Hancock County as of early May is 4.9 million cubic yards! (By federal contractors, who are not cheap; neither is landfill space.) Now that lots are finally cleared, owners can start thinking about returning, even if it’s only to hook up their FEMA trailer to the sewer and power lines and
Habitat Roofers
One day in Bay St. Louis we volunteered at the first Habitat for Humanity house going up in the area. Jeff worked on the roof with Betsy from Bellevue! start daydreaming about a new house on the site.
Another stat: there are nearly 9,000 FEMA trailers occupied by Hancock County families. There's a fear that neighborhoods will look like trailer parks for years to come. There's also a fear that FEMA will pull the trailers before most families have anywhere else to go...
Just since we’ve arrived on the coast, FEMA (the Federal Emergency Management Agency) came out with its long-anticipated new
“flood insurance rate maps.” These maps are important because they delineate base flood elevations and are used by local building departments to dictate how high above that base flood line the first floors of new houses have to be elevated. The absence of these maps was a significant roadblock to rebuilding, as you can imagine. The few beachfront homes that we saw under construction were taking no chances and were perched on pilings at least 10 feet above the ground.
By far the most frustrating roadblocks have been thrown up by insurance companies. Policy holders have been offered settlements in most cases, but are refusing to accept them as final. Many are suing, which could keep them in limbo for months or years. Distilling the dozens of
Balloon Girls
Shelly crafted animal balloon flowers as centerpieces for the CityTeam weekly community dinner, then made balloon toys for all the kids, including Anna, pictured here. explanations we heard, including one from a lawyer who has been very busy with such litigation, our understanding of the problem is that homeowner’s insurance policies alone do not cover “flood damage,” which is what the significant water damage from the breached levees and the storm surges has been classified as. Understand that a modern house has been flooded is unlivable until the interior walls are ripped down to bare studs and re-insulated and drywalled. (Interestingly, lath-and-plaster walls that lack modern insulation tend not to mold.) And floorings, furnishings and belongings below the waterline are typically ruined.
An example: Hurricane winds blow half the shingles off a roof, but most damage to the home is caused by a storm surge from the bay a quarter-mile away. Silty saltwater laps four feet up the walls for several hours before retreating. A homeowner’s insurance policy covers the roof damage to the tune of several thousand dollars, but not the waterlogged contents of the home or any damage to the structure, which may run hundreds of thousands of dollars, because there is a “flood” exception in the policy.
If you didn’t have flood insurance, you are screwed, and even then, we
Distribution Center
This is the CityTeam distribution center, before all the "shoppers" arrive. Nonperishable food, clothing, bedding, diapers, toiletries, books, toys are all available and free for the taking. didn’t meet anyone who seems satisfied that their insurance payments are equal to the cost of replacing what they lost. In some cases, this was
everything.
Again, this is hard to fathom. Initial donations of clothing, bedding, tools and all sorts of supplies were so appreciated and construction materials are still desperately needed. I was fortunate enough to meet a Bay St. Louis potter/painter named Ruth Thompson, and I fell in love with one of her paintings that was completed in the months after the storm using entirely donated art supplies. Her studio was destroyed and she had to switch media out of necessity - from oils on canvas to acrylics on paper. We bought her art as an early birthday present for me (and promptly shipped it off to Washington), and I’ve never been so glad to hand a check to someone. Ruth is represented on
THE ARTS of Hancock County website, which has an adopt-an-artist program.
We offered our services at the disaster relief camp set up by
CityTeam Ministries, and met dozens of friendly, dedicated volunteers who didn’t ask about our religion, just accepted our helping hands. I used them to make balloon centerpieces for the tables for their
Miss Mike & Mr. Pickles
These are our two wonderful and patient hosts from Bay St. Louis: Miss Mike and her little dog Mr. Pickles. The two of them rode out Katrina in this house by climbing into the attic to escape the rising water. Now the house is half livable again, and we stayed in an indoor, air-conditioned guest room. weekly “community dinner” (which we helped cook), then animal balloons for all the children in attendance. Big smiles underneath those colorful balloon hats!
CityTeam impressed us with their organization. (They have an up-to-date, urgently-needed
gifts-in-kind list online, and there is a drop-off center in Seattle.) We volunteered at the CityTeam distribution center on Saturday, and two-thirds of the families who came to collect free food, clothing, household supplies, etc., were driving expensive new cars. The reason? Flooded vehicles were complete losses, and the insurance companies promptly and generously paid out on their auto insurance policies. New cars were easier to get than reliable old ones (car dealerships were some of the first businesses to reopen), and the insurance money was spent before the vital necessity of being thrifty had sunk in.
On Sunday we attended services at the St. Rose de Lima Catholic church. OK, we went for the gospel choir, which all the Port Townsend volunteers have raved about, and we soon knew why. Came out with our ears ringing and melodies streaming through our brains for the next week. The congregation (2/3 black, 1/3 white) got on its feet and clapped and sang along. Really seemed to enjoy
Painting
Shelly treated herself to an [upcoming] birthday present: this amazing painting of a sandhill crane by Bay St. Louis artist Ruth Thompson (pictured here). It was painted since the storm with donated materials. Glad to take home this momento! themselves. Even the sermon garnered applause. Worship is so much more fun this way.
We also volunteered our time at a
Habitat for Humanity house construction site, sorted the moldy books and papers from the salvageable ones in a private library, and cleaned the mud off antique furniture with toothbrushes. The latter two projects benefited individual families, but they had asked for help and volunteers like ourselves responded to the call. The work had to be done before they could move on.
Our Bay St. Louis host, “Miss Mike,” sends a big hello to all the Sister City supporters in Port Townsend. Her air-conditioned guest bedroom was more than we had hoped for. Her good news is that she’s out of a trailer and back into her house, although only half of it has been remodeled. An amazing, strong person, someone we hope to meet again. And we hope to return to Bay St. Louis in a couple of years to appreciate all the hard work that has been poured into this remarkable community. It will return, the stronger for all the volunteers and donations that have supported this rebuilding effort. As the amended city logo reads: “A place apart
Muddy Hallway
Another day we helped muck out a late 1800s house belonging to a Bay St. Louis policeman. We tossed moldy books from the library and this volunteer cleaned mud from every nook and cranny of this freestanding cabinet. - and a part of every place.” (Read post-Katrina stories from Bay St. Louis at a website called
Rising From Ruin.)
Former
Port Townsend Leader reporter Miranda also says hello to her hometown of yore. We met up with her just as she’d finished finals for her master’s degree in public health at Tulane University in New Orleans. She’s doing really well - that Peace Corps experience in Kazakhstan set her life on a new course - and hopes to work overseas in the near future. Her comment on our year-long road trip: “It’s so cool that in Port Townsend, dreams like yours are actually encouraged, and people will help you make them come true.” Yes, that positive, can-do energy has gotten us this far!
Miranda attended the last day of the New Orleans’
Jazzfest with us, where we heard performances by Paul Simon, Lionel Richie and an amazing local crooner named
John Boutte. In addition, we met Miranda’s friend Leigh Ann, who in a later email shared a phrase that is wildly apropos to why we’re taking this trip:
“I don’t do it to change the country, I do it so the country won’t change me.” Spoken by A. J. Muste regarding
Half-walled Parlor
An example of the slow repairs being made to many flooded homes. Here, the water-damaged drywall and insulation have been removed, and new materials can be patched to the existing stuff at top. his standing nightly in front of the White House with a candle during the Vietnam War. That’s right, we couldn’t just sit at home!
And our experience volunteering in Bay St. Louis has encouraged us to offer our time and skills more often as we travel the country. Future hosts, let us know which of your favorite local charities we can volunteer for! We get something out of giving, too. As Gandhi put it:
“The best way to find yourself is to lose yourself in the service of others.” P.S. See photo captions for more on our north-of-the-coast destinations - like the Louisiana Cotton Museum and Vicksburg and Natchez, Miss. - that didn’t make it into this blog narrative. I think you can see why!
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gitte
non-member comment
solstice greeting
21 of june in the tropic of cancer, midday with hardly a shadow, but lovely temps and cool breeze. And there you are working in Bay St Louis... We just got Email and it is the first time I have a chance to tune in. It's like being in touch again, I love it and send you hugs and wishes for continued wonderful adventures. gitte