{"id":33,"date":"2007-06-18T22:49:02","date_gmt":"2007-06-19T04:49:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/idubbs.com\/blog\/?p=33"},"modified":"2007-06-18T22:49:02","modified_gmt":"2007-06-19T04:49:02","slug":"new-orleans-2007-3-of-4","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.idubbs.com\/blog\/2007\/new-orleans-2007-3-of-4\/","title":{"rendered":"New Orleans 2007 (3 of 4)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Day 3 – Sunday<\/span><\/p>\n

After yesterday’s unpleasant task of dealing with the deceased family dog, I was very happy to see that our Catholic Charities rep brought her (very much alive) dog along with her today.\u00a0 <\/span>True, he did throw up on the porch of the house we were going to be working on, but it’s all good.\u00a0 <\/span>\ud83d\ude42\u00a0 <\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

For today’s project\u00a0 <\/span>we showed up at a house with 2 full crews (about 30 people) – way more than was needed for the job.\u00a0 <\/span>So after getting some initial work done, we split up – leaving 6-7 to finish up the first house while the rest of us moved on to another home after a brief stop at the Catholic Charities ‘base’.\u00a0 <\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

The first house of the day was a duplex.\u00a0 <\/span>The half of the building we were working on had taken some roof damage from the storm and subsequently had water damage to that area of the home.\u00a0 <\/span>The rest of the house was intact, but the family couldn’t come back until the damaged part was fixed.\u00a0 <\/span>The family was around for the day to help and oversee:\u00a0 <\/span>A mother, father and 3 boys.\u00a0 <\/span>This was a poorer part of town than we were in yesterday and the house we were working on was right next to a church – nestled in right with all the other houses on the block.\u00a0 <\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

After surveying the house, Catholic Charities determined that we would gut the back two rooms of the home and leave the rest intact.\u00a0 <\/span>Unfortunately for us, that meant the kitchen.\u00a0 <\/span>\ud83d\ude42\u00a0 <\/span>So, another refrigerator would need to be hauled out – again, nice and ripe.\u00a0 <\/span>We also had a washing machine that still had a load of laundry in it and was full of water that had been sitting since the storm.\u00a0 <\/span>The fridge came out in once piece, but the washer decided to start spraying water all over so it was dumped out the back before it spilled all over the kitchen.\u00a0 <\/span>‘Pungent’ wouldn’t accurately describe the smell.\u00a0 <\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Dan started in on the yard right away, which was good because the majority of the work we needed to do was in the back part of the house, and getting all that stuff out through the jungle was not going to be fun.\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

After those big items were removed, the rest of us moved on to the next home.\u00a0 <\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

At the second house, we all concentrated on the inside of the main house.\u00a0 <\/span>Over 20 people in a small home was a pretty impressive sight.\u00a0 <\/span>The initial demo went pretty quickly, but soon slowed down as we got to the details.\u00a0 <\/span>The bathroom was going to take considerable effort, the ceiling had blown insulation that was going to be a mess, there seemed to be a huge number of nails in the walls that needed to be removed and there were several rooms with hardwood floors that would need to be removed.\u00a0 <\/span>After tearing hardwood floor boards up, the number of nails in the walls like nothing.\u00a0 <\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Sunday night we were treated to a river boat ride – where a few of the Catholic Charities staff joined us as well as some of the home owners that we had been working for.\u00a0 <\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

The two things I remember most from the home owners speaking were:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. \n

    The stories these folks have to tell are powerful.\u00a0 <\/span>The ninety + year old gentleman that lived in the house that was painted this trip (and had been gutted by the previous Pohlad group)\u00a0 <\/span>told us a few things.\u00a0 <\/span>He told us about watching bodies floating by his house after the storm while he was still in the house.\u00a0 <\/span>And he told us how frustrating it was that people didn’t understand when people were looting after the storm – not because they were bad people, but because they had to do it to survive.\u00a0 <\/span>They needed to steal food in order to eat, not because they were taking advantage of the situation.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span><\/p>\n<\/li>\n

  2. \n

    This gentleman’s daughter conveyed to us how happy there were seeing the search party markings removed from the house.\u00a0 <\/span>As long as those markings were there, it was a reminder of the event and the pain associated with it.\u00a0 <\/span>Painting over it was a symbol for them that they had gotten past at least one milestone and could keep moving forward.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span><\/p>\n<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    \u00a0<\/p>\n

    Intro<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

    Day 2<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

    Day 4<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Day 3 – Sunday After yesterday’s unpleasant task of dealing with the deceased family dog, I was very happy to see that our Catholic Charities rep brought her (very much […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-33","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pgWQ1-x","jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.idubbs.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.idubbs.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.idubbs.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.idubbs.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.idubbs.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=33"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.idubbs.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.idubbs.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.idubbs.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.idubbs.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}