[StBernard] Katrina cleanup trip an eye-opener for Iowans

[Westley Annis]

Katrina cleanup trip an eye-opener for Iowans
By TODD ERZEN
REGISTER STAFF WRITER


August 19, 2006



It's called a muck-out.

Seven missionaries from Clive's Faith Lutheran Church drove down to New
Orleans on July 29, donned coveralls, boots, gloves, hard hats and
respirators, and stripped a Katrina-ravaged house down to the studs before
returning home on Aug. 5.

Nobody could believe what they saw.

"I've actually had dreams about it," said Dave Abrams, 71, a retired pastor
and Army chaplain who went on the trip. "I didn't think it would affect me
that way, but it has. They aren't even close to repairing what happened down
there. ...What hit me is the paralyzation of the people."

"Ghost town" was the phrase used most often by the missionaries to describe
the scene that surrounded them in Chalmette, the New Orleans suburb where
Lutheran Disaster Relief placed them. Surrounded by block after block of
houses abandoned to looters and soaked through with salt water, dirt,
sewage, mold and oil from a spill that was larger than the Exxon Valdez
incident, Faith Lutheran's recovery effort was an island of compassion in a
storm of neglect.

"It has been almost a year, and there is still so much to be done," said
Angie Larson, the trip's organizer and Faith Lutheran's director of youth
and family ministries. "There is a shrimp boat in the middle of the
neighborhood. There are cars on top of houses. It is a mess. I've been on
probably seven or eight mission trips. This one by far has impacted me the
most."

Many of the middle-class homes the missionaries worked around still had the
spray-painted markings from when rescue workers surveyed each house to
account for the living and the dead who remained in the aftermath of the
levee break and subsequent flood. In the case of the house that Larson, her
mother and the rest of their team worked on, a middle-age couple and their
teenage son were forced to move in with family after both adults lost their
jobs and were, like many, left in limbo by insurance companies.

Lutheran Disaster Relief has helped 189 such homeowners who have requested
its services in the months since Katrina, filling the curbside with
furniture, clothing, appliances, drywall and everything else that once was
dry but can now be described as trash.

"It was difficult going into these people's home and shoveling out
everything that they owned," said Julie Erickson, 44, who went on the
mission with daughters Amy, 23, and Kathryn, 19. "We had to go through their
belongings and pick out what they might like to keep or what might mean
something to them. It felt like you were in a graveyard of memories."

Added Amy, who plans on going back to New Orleans with her sister in
December: "We had stopped hearing about it in the news. I thought we would
just be doing some yardwork or painting or what have you. Then to get down
there and see the utter destruction was just mind-blowing. I couldn't
believe our own people were devastated that way."

With government infrastructure and services in shambles, utilities still
unavailable and businesses such as grocery stores and hardware stores not
bouncing back to aid with Chalmette's recovery, only the most stubborn
homeowners have permanently moved back into the neighborhood. Rarely has a
house been completely renovated. Other half-measures are evident, such as
the ex-police officer down the road who split time between a tent in his
gutted living room and a FEMA-provided trailer in his driveway.

To those isolated returnees, Julie Erickson said, any sign of life in the
neighborhood was considered a blessing.

"The people are very glad to have us down there," she said. "One of the
comments was that if it wasn't for the faith-based people going down, then
nobody would be down there helping them."

Lutheran Disaster Relief estimates that it has provided about $2 million
worth of volunteer muck-out services to Katrina victims so far, according to
Larson. Such salvage projects may in many cases be for naught, though, as
entire neighborhoods will ultimately be bulldozed in the coming year because
of overwhelming levels of decay.

"You kind of expected it to be somewhat better, and it was almost worse,"
Zeke Thiessen, 19, said of his experience among Katrina's ruins.

Reporter Todd Erzen can be reached at (515) 284-8527 or terzen at dmreg.com