| Page: 1| 2| 3| 4| 5| 6| 7| 8| |
|
Links
Laura Halleman's article on HandsOn AP Article - Not exaggerated Elmer St. - One of ours |
The dogs have left, so this was the first day I was able to sleep in. Up at 5:30AM and my first real breakfast-- fruit, oatmeal, coffee.
The house-gutting crew, about 15-20 strong, went out at 8:00. We took lots of tools and plenty of face masks since we were working in houses that had been flooded.
We finished off the apartment house we had started the day before and moved across the street to do a smaller house, about 1000 square feet in size. This home was only 22 years old so it was a lot easier to work with. The home owner was there and she was very grateful. Her brother, Arthur, was helping do the cleanout. He had ridden out the storm in Biloxi and had a piece of advice for anyone who might be inclined to do that sort of thing: "Don't."
Our crew really worked hard-- we got the house done by noon.
Here's a Before and After in the front room:
Lunch was at the nearby "soup kitchen" again. This is an elaborate setup of revival tents sponsored by some ministry. They had several big tents set up for feeding three meals a day since many in that area can't cook for themselves. In another tent there was a preacher preaching, but that was optional. The operation was staffed by church youth groups from outside the state.
There was also an Air Force encampment in the park, from out of state. I had lunch with some of the sergeants and they said they'd been doing cleanups and all kinds of other jobs.
We started on another work order in the same neigborhood and managed to finish the house by quitting time. Here is part of the crew with the tools of the trade. The painted markings on the doors of the houses indicate which organization first checked it out, the date checked, how many bodies are inside, and other information. Other coded markings, not shown here, tell whether the house is safe to enter.
A lot of residents are still shell-shocked and don't know what to do next. Others are feeling better.
After the house was finished, we went further east to survey a job that we were supposed to do. This was to be a yard cleanout, presumably for a FEMA trailer. The further east you go, the worse the damage is. This part of town has the back bay behind it, the sea before, and the exposed entrance to the back bay. Good grief we thought we'd seen bad stuff before, but this was way worse. There were entire sections of the area just wiped off the map. The rubble is only a foot high-- it's even worse than the beach boulevard that faces the sea.
There are no houses here that can be saved. They're all just built on bricks or cement blocks and went flying during the storm. Here's one of the better ones.
Monday, October 10
Today I went out with a tree crew. There are still lots of big trees obstructing people's yards and these need to be cleared to make space for FEMA trailers. I met Bill Driscoll from Massachusetts doing a tree job. Here he is hooking up a tree and trimming limbs. That's Bill Jr. up on the tree and Bill Driscoll Sr. on the ground. Bill Sr.'s father is John T. Driscoll of Massachusetts Turnpike fame.
Mike, one of the firemen from Illinois brought his bobcat along. It's equipped with hydraulic grapple jaws that are a real time-saver. He can move an entire brush pile in one swoop and wrestle up to 4,000 pounds of tree trunk. We cleaned up several trees here and dumped everything by the roadside, crushing yet another chain-link fence in the process. (We have removed or crushed many of these to get the jobs done. I hope we don't get sued!)
We moved to another job in a hard-hit neighborhood where the residents were camped among the ruins. Many of them were self-medicated and I suspect they were the same way before the storm as well. This monster tree had grown around a power pole that fell along with it. Many of the houses had been leveled and others swept off their piers. The tilted deck of one house had been covered with a tarp using salvaged two-by-fours (quite plentiful in that locale) and the homeowner is still camping out on that deck six weeks after the storm.
The man with the beer is telling how he swam from his house a couple hundred feet down the street to rescue two drunk neighbors who couldn't swim. He got them to a safer place then saved another neighbor and a pitbull. The water was over 8 feet deep in this section and lasted for hours. The neighbors are camped together under a tarp on the corner and still drinking. They have a garden hose rigged up as a shower. The whole neighborhood has been condemned and is scheduled for the bulldozer in a couple weeks.
Our tree monkeys got part of the tree removed but finally decided to abandon the job since the electric pole and wires were mixed up with it.
I moved over to the miscellaneous projects team for the rest of the day-- "No job too small." They do yard cleanups, house guttings, smaller trees, etc. Our first project was to remove a board fence and clear some trees.
Then we moved on to a house gutting job nearby. The first step is to tear off a door to use as a ramp for the wheelbarrow.
The interior was wallboard over plaster so we had a lot of work to clean it out and lug it all to the roadside. Meanwhile, the tarp monkeys scaled the roof and installed tarps over the leaky portions to prevent further damage.
The owner offered us some cold drinks from his fridge, which was working. He was so grateful that he also went out to Dominos and brought us back some pizza which we ate at his picnic table. That was good-- I hadn't had pizza in a while. sixty year old O.J. (the other O.J.), the owner, related how the water had come almost up to his second floor. He took refuge in the attic and resigned himself to whatever might happen. One of the neighbors had a boat and came to rescue him, but he could only get to the other end of the house and was unable to reach them. O.J. has a big house lot and plans to tear down the 70 year old house, salvage some of the wood, and build a new house on another part of the lot.
While we were doing the house, the city workers were working up and down the street removing the rubbish piles from both sides. They just keep on doing it with their humongous Volvo bucket loaders and 18-wheeler rubbish trailers and eventually the street gets cleared. A bucket loader is the best way to move a wet mattress!
We walked to a nearby location to check out a house that had two flooded cars in the driveway. These had to be moved to allow placement of a FEMA trailer. Mad Mike came by with the bobcat to do the honors. This is his favorite type of job. The carport also needed to be removed.
Mike really can swing that bobcat around! He crunched into the car and had it parallel parked alongside the street in minutes.
What day is it?
We've got so much going on here and I'm so busy that it's hard to keep up with this log. I've now started to lose track of which days things happened, so I think it's time to abandon the day by day account. Besides that, I've had a bad head cold for the last week, so my normal operating mode is in a haze.
The coastal boulevard, Rt. 90, is still closed off and guarded by the Army. Some of the worst damage can been seen there. I sneaked up close enough on one of the side streets to get a picture. To the right of the tree, you can see a staircase still standing. There is no trace of the building, whatever it was.
While we were doing a tarp job in one neighborhood, one of the Red Cross "ice cream trucks" cruised past and I got a free can of cold Gatorade. They are still feeding many people in East Biloxi.They have four people in each truck-- two in the front, and two in the back. They fly their volunteers in from all over the country for two to three week stints and provide housing. Each is given $800 cash for incidental expenses during this time.
Here are some pilots from Angel Flights, who are still flying in supplies for us to use and/or distribute. These are airplane owners who want to put their planes to good use. Normally, they do stuff like fly sick kids to the Mayo clinic and stuff like that. We meet them at the airport and unload the supplies.
Here are some more pictures of the HandsOnUSA base camp in the Methodist church "conference center." We've always got piles of bottled water stored in the main room. The tap water is ok for washing but still not deemed safe to drink. Our work crews always have coolers of bottled water and ice with them.
The indoor "camping" arrangements are quite plush, with large air beds available. Some people customize their space with locally available materials.
Massachusetts volunteers James and Jennifer reflect with team leader Ryan on the day's accomplishments.
The area we work in East Biloxi is hard to find your way around in since many of the street signs were obliterated. The Red Cross and FEMA and others are having the same trouble. HandsOn came up with the idea of putting up temporary street signs where needed. The mayor sent us a letter of permission and our volunteer crews made 150 signs and put them up. The very first day, I was helped 4 or 5 times by the signs.
I have safety glasses to wear, but the clear glasses aren't too good outside due to the sun. I gave a call to Jo-Ann's brother Russ at Orchard Equipment and he sent me some tinted safety glasses by Priority Mail-- not just for me but for the whole tree cutting team.
I spent a day with a tarping team. The roofs aren't as steep as in New England, but they are still steep enough to be pretty scary. (I don't know what the life expectancy of a tarper is.) Here is Alabama Mike on top of a policeman's home in Ocean Springs. We called the office to ask how much damage the roof had and he said he couldn't tell us because he hadn't seen his house in the daylight since the storm. They're working long days.
Aside from the area to be tarped, there were many missing shingles. I just looked around the street and gathered up some blown away shingles in the neighbor's yard and used those to repair the small areas. Looking at the all the tarps in the picture it looks like the same shoddy roofer did all the houses on one street.
After the tarping job, we went to survey a house that supposedly needed to have the interior stripped out. The occupant wasn't there but the neighbors told us it was a crackhouse and to be careful not to get stuck with needles in the upholstery or elsewhere. We decided to decline that particular project. Safety is our primary concern.
The sign on the floor, indicative perhaps of a bad attitude, reads, "Drunk Drivers Against Mad Mothers."
We have lunch privileges with the Biloxi police department and happened to arrive just as Ronald McDonald showed up to entertain the troops. Ronald didn't have any burgers or milkshakes with him, though.
Ronald gave some tips to the nice people who serve us in the cafeteria. They are all volunteers from Biloxi, many of whom have lost their homes.
Some areas seem simply beyond saving. In some of them you can see messages painted on the homes to let neighbors know what became of their friends.
We travelled all the way to the eastern end of the peninsula, where the ocean meets the Back Bay. The route 90 bridge that crosses the bay has been destroyed. It will probably be years before it can be replaced or repaired. One of the casinos nearby is a total wreck. It was built on a huge barge to satisfy state regulations that casions must be "offshore."
Doctor Bob and our nurses patrol the hardest hit neighborhoods in the poorest parts of East Biloxi every day, advising residents, assessing needs, delivering supplies, and giving free tetanus and hepatitis shots. Keep in mind that, six weeks after the hurricane, there are still families living in the rubble piles under blue tarps. Here is Dr. Bob's letter to President Bush.
Dear Mr. President,
I wish to bring to your attention VICTOR ROBY, a true Biloxi hero, whom you met in person, at his destroyed homesite when you visited Biloxi for the first time after the Hurricane Katrina disaster. Victor and you were filmed by TV cameras as you 'interviewed' him on the street. At the time you asked him,sincerely, "What can we do to help you". Victor replied that "a trailer would be nice". You promised him, in full view of your retinue and the TV cameras that you would do "everything humanly possible to help'.
Victor is a strong but humble 41 year old Shrimp Boat Worker, now indefinitely 'unemployed' because of the destruction of the shrimping fleet. His elderly mother, with whom he lived, all his life, at their home at 347 Bayview, Biloxi, is safely housed out of town. Like thousands of others in this bereft community, he is now homeless. I encountered him in a makeshift encampment at 284 4th Street along with a group of friends, neighbors and coworkers. It was my impression that these people were the least, lost, and left out, barely making it after Katrina worked its fury out on these wonderful, salt of the earth people. Victor himself greeted us ( volunteers on a medical street team) with a warm, open smile, apologizing for the very humble state of the encampment and his companions. I believe that Victor is there in order to watch out for, help, and take care of these others.
To date, Victor has heard nothing from any government agent and, there is no trailer. Only official silence. Only the gratitude of his neighbors for Victor's being there when they needed help the most.
Mr. President, I do not wish to leave you the impression that I am advocating for Victor, alone. There are literally hundreds of such 'hero survivors' in east Biloxi alone. They are a patient, strong, and a resilient people with deep roots in this community and way too proud and self sufficient to whine and beg for help. I fear that under the overwhelming burdens of recovery, they cannot last much longer. The thousands of volunteers working here can , and are, doing much, but it is not enough given the magnitude of the destruction and despair. These people cannot be indefinitely patient. They are already asking, as are the generous volunteers: "Where is our compassionate federal government with its enormous resources? Where is President George Bush with his promise to do everything humanly possible?"
Please, Mr. President, do not let this plea sit under a pile of "other business", unread, unanswered, while a people fade away into obscurity for the lack of attention, or because of unfulfilled promises. VICTOR is still waiting.