Making the rounds

NEW ORLEANS -- St. Olaf students continued Tuesday with work on a variety of projects throughout the city of New Orleans and in the city of Slidell, about a half-hour drive to the east.

“I know she’ll be tickled that we’re here,” Bethlehem Camp Director Katie Heuer said of the owner of the home that a crew of about 10 Oles had been assigned to gut. “She’s called several times to make sure we’ve taken care of the paperwork.”

The house is located in Chalmette, an area in St. Bernard Parish that was hit hard by the post-Katrina flooding. A few other houses in the area have been reoccupied (most likely by the few owners who hold jobs in the area), but overall the neighborhood feels like a ghost town. A few windows and lawns hold forlorn “For Sale” signs.

Inside, it appears that the house one point was completely submerged. The blades on the numerous ceiling fans are so warped that they look like drooping leaves. Our crew isn’t the first one at this address, but there’s still plenty to keep the students busy for the day.

It was a new-enough home that there was no danger of asbestos and the mold had largely been cleaned out, but some of the students still preferred suiting up in full gear -- including respirators, goggles, multiple layers of gloves and puffy blue suits -- before going in.

Businesses need help, too
A few blocks away, near a port area, a larger group of students continued a mucking-out project that began in a two-story office building Monday. Although most relief work continues to take place in residential areas, relief workers (or “voluntourists” as the locals call them) are reminded that it’s important for businesses to get back in operation so that they can provide jobs. This building used to house the offices of a metal-working company.

As glass cracked and tinkled in the background, crew member Adam Garnaas explained that the group was breaking second-floor windows in order to be able to toss out the furniture and equipment that was still inside. “Yesterday we had two huge piles of rubble, desks and electronics because there had still been a few computers left inside.” The piles were only growing.

Inside, the office was a hive of activity as students rolled up soiled carpets and knocked out drywall with sledgehammers. Some offices still showed how floodwaters had left heavy desks and equipment at odd angles. And nearly everywhere you could see mold -- multicolored and hazardous, but against which the students were well protected.


In the bayou
East of New Orleans and outside the city of Slidell a crew was gutting a trailer home. It hardly seemed worth it as the crew ripped out the walls and the floor, but it’s what the owner wanted. The trailer was located next to a home (the owner’s mother’s) in a forested and lightly populated area.

Crew member Kelby Hackler recounted an incident from the previous day at the home of a 67-year-old woman who recently had undergone heart surgery. The woman had some chairs that she wanted back in her house but Hackler, a pre-med student at St. Olaf, spotted a harmful fungus growing on the chairs -- the same fungus she had recently researched for a class.

“I told her that with all the health problems she already had and with all her respiratory problems since she smoked, that ‘this would be the last thing you want because it could kill you -- it’s deadly.’” Although one of the chairs was an antique, the woman sadly took the advice and relented. “But she did OK,” says Hackler.

The food line
A different part of Slidell saw St. Olaf students welcoming cars to a drive-through foodshelf service for Louisiana residents. “Everyone has a different story to share,” says Michaela McLaughlin about the drivers she meets. “I got hugs from two different people through car windows today,” she adds. “And they remember all the different groups who come down here to help out.”

Area resident Vincent Gadera, wearing a white tank top, drives up in an old Nissan to collect some food. He appreciates the help because, he says, he doesn’t have any food at home. “It’s been slow for me with work and I’m just going through some problems.

“This helps out,” he says with a smile. “That’s why I’m here.”

In the photos: Warped ceiling fans from high floodwaters; housecleaning crew at the end of the day; Heidi Sjoberg, Jenny Kallas and Helen Hassinger suit up for a little demolition; busting up an office building; moving carefully in the shell of a trailer home.

Notes: Special thanks to St. Olaf Director of Student Activities Kris Vatter for such great driving to all the work sites (sorry I got us lost, Kris; it will help once all the road signs are back up). Also, this could be my last post for a few days as I'm returning to Northfield this afternoon, but won't officially be back at work until next week. I don't know when I'll be able to post more news -- but I'll see what I can do ...

Thanks for reading!

Katrina remains front-page news ... down here

Yesterday’s Time-Picayune included a front-page story about the report from the Corps of Engineers-sponsored Interagency Performance Evaluation Task Force (IPET) that was released Monday. According to the paper, the report cites “the failure to build New Orleans-area hurricane levees and levee walls as part of an integrated, well-fortified system" to have "doomed the region during Katrina.”

The paper reports that the IPET document estimates direct financial losses associated with the flooding from Katrina at $20 billion, with 77 percent in residential areas, and an additional $7 billion in losses to public property. IPET also counted 727 fatalities in the five parishes in and around New Orleans. The report also calls the long-lasting effects that go beyond economic losses “unprecedented in the United States.”

Business report
A related story in the same paper details the state of retail and other businesses located in an area about near U.S. Interstate 10 about one mile north of Bethlehem Volunteer Center. “It’s a classic Catch-22,” reports the paper. “The resumption of commerce offers a sense of optimism to homeowners as they make their own decisions about coming back. Reopened businesses are a promise of sorts that a neighborhood has a certain base level of services.

“But businesses need reassurances, too. They want to be certain there will be enough customers to sustain their operations once they reopen,” says the paper.

The road to Bethlehem

NEW ORLEANS -- The main building of Bethlehem Volunteer Center, the camp for one of the St. Olaf groups, is what used to be the gymnasium for Bethlehem Children’s Treatment Center. After the young residents of the center were evacuated in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, the site -- located in the center of one of the hardest-hit areas of New Orleans -- was deemed to be ideal as a staging area for long-term disaster response efforts and was set up as such by Lutheran Disaster Response. Wisconsin native Katie Huener is director of the camp. Assisting her are Construction Manager Larry Felsheim and his wife, Ellen.

The camp, surrounded by a razor-wire fence, shares resources with an adjacent, Lutheran-affiliated facility called Camp Restore. Both facilities are located in a hard-hit neighborhood of homes that are still recovering from the effects of the hurricane. Bethlehem also lies on the shore of a small lake teeming with waterfowl and fish (but which has not been tested for contamination since the hurricane).

The old gymnasium that is Bethlehem has been divided into two bunkrooms (men’s and women’s) plus a general meeting/staging area that includes room for supplies. The practical structure is a work in progress demonstrating that, while a sound base facility is important to long-term efforts, there are still more important projects in the city.

After-dinner pastimes for students include reading and studying, playing basketball, playing cards, watching TV and just hanging out. Lights go out at 10 p.m. Lights on again at 6 a.m., and then back to the day's projects.

Getting started

NEW ORLEANS -- After lights on at 6:15 this morning and a hearty breakfast that included biscuits and gravy, the group of St. Olaf volunteers at Bethlehem Volunteer Center -- as well as the other two camps of St. Olaf students -- spread throughout the city to tackle the day’s projects.

One group of eight volunteers was sent to a home on St. Ann’s St., just a dozen blocks northwest of the famed French Quarter. The house had already been “mucked out” (the process of digging out the layer of hazardous silt left behind by the receding flood waters) so the job of this crew was to tear out ceilings and drywall, taking care with handling the mold they uncovered.

Gutting a house
After removing her hard hat, respirator and multiple layers of protective gloves, Emily Segar ’09 talked about stripping the interior of the house down to the studs. “We’ve run into a couple of problems because the walls of the house were moved about 4 to 6 inches [by the flood water],” she says. “The water rotted everything away and shifted things around inside, so it’s been an interesting challenge.”

She calls the neighborhood a “mix” of houses that have been rebuilt and houses that are just getting mucked out and gutted now. She notes that there are quite a few more people in the neighborhood where her crew was working than in nearby neighborhoods that remain largely abandoned. “So hopefully we can get through a lot of houses this week.”

Crew member Michael Murchison ’10 says he’s felt “overwhelmed” by everything he’s seen. “It’s going to take a long time before everything is back to normal. We’ll just do what we can and go from there.”

Other current Ole Spring Relief II projects Monday included (but were not limited to) stocking a food shelf, mucking out an office building and maintenance work in the various camps.

In photos: Ishanaa Rambachan, Tony Olson and Tremaine Versteeg confer about the day’s plans before heading out from Camp Atonement in northeastern New Orleans (note that Ole Spring Relief II, like last year’s trip, has been organized entirely by students); Shaina Short sweeps out debris; Chris Peterson takes a break.

Lush Louisiana

SLIDELL, La. -- Even while driveing through the thick Sunday morning fog we could see that Louisiana was a different world than what we had left behind in Minnesota. Our first stop of the morning was for breakfast in a park (see photos). From there we crossed Lake Pontchartrain and drove into downtown New Orleans for four hours of free time, after which the group split up and drove to the three separate work camps that would host them for the coming week.

Although Louisiana is beautiful and the downtown would prove to be a worthy tourist destination, the stretch of highway between the lake and city served as a sobering reminder about why they are here. We passed neighborhood after neighborhood that had been wholly abandoned. In other areas we could see entire blocks of damaged homes, some of which were completely covered by blankets of moss and vines. Veterans from last year's Ole Spring Relief trip could see improvements over the past year, but it's obvious to everyone that there is no shortage of work.

Midnight stop

MISSOURI-TENNESSEE BORDER -- Most students still seemed to have energy during our final rest stop -- at midnight -- before the buses quieted down for the rest of the ride to Louisiana.

Interview with Jonathan Eugster '09

HANNIBAL, Mo. -- I chatted with with Jonathan Eugster ’09 as we drove through Hannibal, Mo., some eight hours into our trek to New Orleans.

D.G.: Why are you heading to New Orleans?
J.E.: So we can build houses, clean up and otherwise do good works for the world.

D.G.: Will this be your first time in New Orleans?
J.E.: Last summer I went on Ole Spring Relief to Biloxi, Miss., but we spent some time in the French Quarter of New Orleans.

D.G.: What inspired you to go on OSR last year?
J.E.: I’d never had any significant experience with volunteer work before that and a lot of my friends were going. I figured that it would be a good way to spend time somewhere warm while still doing something worthwhile and spending time with friends.

D.G.: So it must have been worthwhile for you last year since you’re taking the trip again this year.
J.E.: It definitely was. I found a strange and unexpected passion for volunteer work and I felt that I needed to do it again this year.

D.G.: What do you mean by "strange"?
J.E.: I sort of didn’t have much faith in myself in terms being able to give without getting something in return. But working in Biloxi without pay I still felt I was getting something in return. It helped me come to the realization that I’m not a purely selfish individual.

D.G.: What sort of work did you do in Biloxi?
J.E.: Mostly demolition and some drywall work. Mainly it was cleaning up. This year we’re going to be doing more construction, which is something I’m better at because I’ve been working for three summers building log homes in Wisconsin.

D.G.: What are you most hoping to get out of this trip?
J.E.: I’m looking forward to spending more time in the city. Last year we were cut off from any real interaction outside of our working environment. So being in New Orleans I hope to interact in a more significant way with the local people and maybe get a feel for the culture down there -- go to some jazz clubs and see how the music scene is recovering.

D.G.: Thank you, Jonathan. I’ll try to check in with you later and see how you’re doing. Enjoy the rest of the ride …