[StBernard] Team spirit in Louisiana

[Westley Annis]

Team spirit in Louisiana


By Joe Sarnicola / Special to The Citizen
Friday, January 19, 2007 11:39 PM EST

When Auburn native Zach Sturm stepped off the plane at the New Orleans
airport, he had no idea of the devastation he would see over the next seven
days. He was part of a group of students, mostly from Nazareth College and
the State University of New York College of Environmental Science and
Forestry in Syracuse. Ironically, Zach is not a student at either of those
colleges. He is majoring in geographic information systems at SUNY Cortland.

Sarah, Zach's sister and an education student at Nazareth, called her
brother and said she was going to help with clean-up in a part of Louisiana
that had been damaged by Hurricane Katrina, and wondered if he wanted to go
along. He said he did; he bought his plane ticket and he packed his
suitcases. He left Jan. 2 and returned on Jan. 8.

Hilltop Rescue and Relief, a private, volunteer agency based in California,
coordinated the work of the students. Hilltop was founded by Corky Cowart.
Several days after Katrina hit, Cowart drove through Hurricane Rita to reach
the disaster area. He spent the next 10 months laying the foundation for a
network of volunteer helpers, establishing a disaster response operation and
scheduling work camps for specific purposes.

Nearly 4,000 Hilltop volunteers have cleaned out more than 1,100 homes and
cleared brush and other debris.

The parent organization behind Hilltop is the Hilltop Community Church of
Christ in el Segundo, Calif. Its mission statement says: "To provide relief
to the brothers and sisters who are suffering from natural disasters and to
minister to non-Christians by displaying the love of Christ through
compassion and service."

"We all paid our own way," Zach said. "I knew we would be clearing out
houses, but I didn't expect them to be as bad as they were. The town was
deserted. Nobody tried to rebuild their homes. They just lived in parks full
of FEMA trailers."

The town Sturm referred to was Chalmette, La., which had 32,000 residents,
according to the census taken in 2000. After Katrina hit the Gulf Coast in
August 2005, much of Chalmette was submerged under 15 feet of water. When
the water finally receded, what little remained of Chalmette would soon fall
into disrepair and decay.

"Nothing was in order," Zach said. "Everything was a mess. Some of the homes
had a foot or more of sludge on the floors. We had to shovel it out of the
houses in wheelbarrows. They call that 'mucking a house.'"

A typical day would start with breakfast, then off to the work sites at 8:30
a.m. until about 5 p.m., with an hour for lunch. The group stayed in what
used to be the C.R. Rowley Elementary School.

"After breakfast, we'd head out to work," he said. "Walls and floors were
rotten and decayed. We saw a lot of rats and cockroaches. We wore goggles to
keep stuff out of our eyes, face masks and clothes that would be thrown
away. I wasn't going to bring those clothes home."

  
Photo provided
Zach and Sarah Sturm, second and third from right, respectively, were among
the volunteers helping to clean up after Hurricane Katrina.  
Zach was surprised to learn that most of the clean up had been performed by
volunteers.

"The only people that seemed to be helping were private groups," he said. "I
thought I would have seen more government workers or homeowners working.
Those houses hadn't been touched. Dishes and food were left right where they
had been before the storm."

In spite of the hard days of shoveling heavy sludge, removing broken
appliances and ripping out carpets, walls and furniture, Zach said, "I
really want to go back. Most the other kids felt the same way. There's a lot
of work that still needs to be done."