University of Virginia, New Orleans Journals\r\n\r\nMonday, January 9, 2006\r\n\r\nJustin Starr, School of Engineering and Applied Science\r\n\r\nImagine yourself in a far away nation -- preferably somewhere \r\n\r\nin the third world, getting extensive news coverage after a war. \r\n\r\nImagine the devastation -- the suffering, the damage, the sheer \r\n\r\nnumbers of lives that have been affected. Now take this mental \r\n\r\nimage and apply it to the United States -- to one of America\'s \r\n\r\nstoried cities, New Orleans. With that image in mind, one can \r\n\r\nbegin to understand what things were like in the Ninth Ward \r\n\r\ntoday.\r\n\r\nOur day began lightly -- most of us were delighted to have slept \r\n\r\non the relative comfort of our air mattresses on an auditorium \r\n\r\nfloor, rather than the constant motion of yesterday\'s Amtrak \r\n\r\nride. We awoke early, ate breakfast and began our day with a \r\n\r\ntour of New Orleans, in order to provide some sort of context for \r\n\r\nthe work we were going to be doing\r\n\r\nIntentionally, our tour began in some areas of the city that only \r\n\r\nsustained minor damage from the hurricane, and progressed \r\n\r\ninto areas more and more damaged. The contrast was striking. \r\n\r\nAt first, I found myself visibly moved to see a damaged roof on \r\n\r\na house, or a water line on a door, not realizing that this was \r\n\r\nonly the tip of the iceberg. At one point, we drove to a levee that \r\n\r\nhad failed to look at some of the destruction -- and words \r\n\r\ncannot even describe the sight.\r\n\r\nI was immediately struck with how the homes surrounding us \r\n\r\nhad been destroyed -- gaping holes in the roofs, broken \r\n\r\nwindows, all personal belongings on the street, and the interior \r\n\r\ncompletely gutted, leaving only the broken shell of someone\'s \r\n\r\nhome remaining. I just couldn\'t begin to comprehend the \r\n\r\nmagnitude of looking down a street and seeing blocks and \r\n\r\nblocks of similar devastation, then moving down another street \r\n\r\nand seeing more of the same. It was really breathtaking, in a \r\n\r\nhorrible way.\r\n\r\nAt one point, while looking at a Volkswagen Beetle, I thought I \r\n\r\ncould process everything, doing the math and realizing that \r\n\r\nabout 50 houses that I could see had likely sustained significant \r\n\r\ndamage. But then when I tried to apply human life to this figure, \r\n\r\nI just couldn\'t. I tried to imagine losing my home and all worldly \r\n\r\npossessions, but then to effectively apply this same level of loss \r\n\r\nto my entire hometown (which is admittedly small) was really \r\n\r\nhard to process.\r\nI tried to focus on the good things -- all homes were spray \r\n\r\npainted with a graffiti-esque code, indicating whether or not \r\n\r\nbodies were found during an inspection, among other things, \r\n\r\nand very few things we saw had actual casualties. But on other \r\n\r\nhomes, a simple spray-painted message -- help! -- quickly \r\n\r\nsobered my spirits. Another message, painted by the SPCA \r\n\r\nsaid simply -- dead dog.\r\n\r\nWe also went on a walkthrough of a damaged school -- St. \r\n\r\nMary\'s -- a high school which is merging with Xavier University \r\n\r\nPreparatory school, to allow students to get a semester of \r\n\r\nschool in. This school had a watermark five feet up on the first \r\n\r\nfloor, and was completely and totally gutted inside. A cafeteria, \r\n\r\nwith a rack of pots and pans sat empty, and math books sat \r\n\r\nhigh on a shelf in a closet, everything below them having been \r\n\r\ngutted. In one corner of one room sat some band remnants -- \r\n\r\nsome moldy clarinets, marching shoes, and a toy bass drum.\r\nAfter this -- which believe it or not -- was the beginning and \r\n\r\neasiest part of our day -- we went to the Ninth Ward to help a \r\n\r\npriest of a church affiliated with the school we are staying with, \r\n\r\ngut homes ravaged by mold, and again this was an experience \r\n\r\nthat is difficult to describe.\r\n\r\nWe first approached homes that looked undamaged and normal \r\n\r\nfrom the outside -- just like any other homes, aside from the \r\n\r\nspray paint and some water marks. Upon entering, we realized \r\n\r\nthat they had truly ceased to be anything resembling homes. \r\n\r\nThe floodwaters -- which swamped many of these houses for \r\n\r\ndays -- had scooped everything up inside, displaced it all, \r\n\r\nswirled it around, and then deposited it on the ground upon \r\n\r\nreceding, along with whatever unpleasant material was hidden \r\n\r\nin the waters themselves.\r\n\r\nIn essence, to imagine this, take everything in your living room, \r\n\r\nthrow it in a literal blender, add sulfur, rotten eggs and brown \r\n\r\nfood coloring, shake it vigorously and then dump it all over the \r\n\r\nground. Now try to sort through it all.\r\n\r\nAn elderly woman -- 80 years old, I think -- had just returned \r\n\r\nhome to one of the places we were gutting. From her kitchen \r\n\r\nvantage point, she watched as we threw all of the remnants of \r\n\r\nher life in the trash can -- commenting only, that she could \r\n\r\npossibly bleach the china, and save it -- in a way grasp on to a \r\n\r\ntiny piece of the life she once possessed. I had a particularly \r\n\r\ndifficult moment, when breaking through a wall of rotted, moldy \r\n\r\nsheetrock, and discovering a closet -- still full of the woman\'s \r\n\r\nclothes -- on the other side. Everything, even the sweaters she \r\n\r\nhad neatly and carefully attempted to seal in plastic bags, was \r\n\r\nruined. Everything had to be thrown out.\r\n\r\nThis was indeed overwhelming.\r\n\r\nUpon exiting the house, and looking around, it became clear \r\n\r\nthat this situation was the status quo, in almost all of the homes \r\n\r\nwe could see in the 9th Ward -- maybe hundreds -- I\'m not \r\n\r\nreally sure. Everything was like what we had been dealing with, \r\n\r\nand it was like nothing I had ever seen. One of the other people \r\n\r\nworking with us commented that they had, as of that morning \r\n\r\nfound bodies in the homes -- whether true or not, it was \r\n\r\ncertainly believable. People\'s lives were just completely \r\n\r\ndestroyed, and quite frankly, I wasn\'t prepared to see all of that.\r\n\r\nI had especially thought that now -- plus or minus five months \r\n\r\nafter Katrina struck -- it was astonishing that there was still so \r\n\r\nmuch damage. The news media may not discuss it anymore, \r\n\r\nbut there is still so much to be done in New Orleans. In one \r\n\r\nafternoon, we almost completed gutting two houses, upon which \r\n\r\nthe process had already begun, with about 10 of us in each \r\n\r\nhouse. We only provided a drop in the bucket, in terms of what \r\n\r\nwe accomplished as compared to what we was needed. And we \r\n\r\nwere only demolishing -- not even rebuilding at all!\r\n\r\nIn essence, I left the day, after working in homes, and seeing \r\n\r\nthe flooded school, with a feeling that more than lives and \r\n\r\nproperty had been damaged. In truth, with devastation as vast \r\n\r\nas that wrought by Katrina, entire communities had been \r\n\r\nuprooted and displaced. People talk in abstract terms about \r\n\r\nreturning to a neighborhood, when essentially, in many cases, \r\n\r\nthere isn\'t even a neighborhood to return to.\r\n\r\nWhen it was all said and done, and we returned to our \r\n\r\nauditorium floor for the night, the overwhelming thing people \r\n\r\ntalked about was how grateful they were -- for family, friends, \r\n\r\npossessions and a sense of place. Minor discomforts, like leaky \r\n\r\nair mattresses and getting stuck with peanut rather than plain M \r\n\r\n& M\'s, just didn\'t seem as pressing. I think all of us have a real \r\n\r\nsense of how well off we really are, and yet, at the same time \r\n\r\nare excited to wake up at 6:15 a.m. tomorrow morning, pile into \r\n\r\nvans, and get back out there and do some more work -- and put \r\n\r\nanother drop in the bucket.\r\n\r\n Original URL: \r\n\r\nhttp://www.virginia.edu/topnews/releases2006/NewOrleansJourn\r\n\r\nal01.html