The New Orleans Saints

No, this is not going to be about the football team—this post is going to be about the REAL New Orleans Saints—all the people who suffered through the devastation of Katrina, and stayed around to rebuild, and all the people who have gone to New Orleans to help the city recover.


There is a palpable difference between the Katrina recovery efforts in Mississippi and in New Orleans. Many factors contribute to that difference, and it is obvious that politics has played a significant role in that recovery. Immediately after Katrina had blown through the area, the governor of Mississippi was in contact with Washington DC. Perhaps you recall that the governor is Haley Barbour, formerly chair of the Republican National Committee. He received promises of aid from the White House that seemingly set a benchmark for federal aid.

You have no doubt heard of how dysfunctional New Orleans’ and Louisiana’s politicians were immediately before and after the storm. When they finally got around to requesting federal aid, they expected, reasonably, a level of response equal to what Mississippi got. Of course, the extent of damage was so much greater in New Orleans, and the White House balked. So the actual dollars, on a per capita basis, tracking to Louisiana for recovery is far lower than the funds that went to Mississippi.

Understandably, residents of New Orleans are deeply suspicious of the various government forces. This week’s election of a new governor in Louisiana bears testament to that. A young woman who drove me to the airport also bore testament to it—she said she can’t help but think that the government ALLOWED the levees to fail!

That’s enough said about the impact of politics on the recovery efforts. Money is the engine that drives the recovery machine.

After our visit to Mississippi, we drove around parts of New Orleans to see the damage. There is a seeming air of normalcy as you drive through neighborhoods, until you begin to look carefully and closely up and down streets. Apartment complexes stand empty—row after row of buildings that have been mucked out and the resulting pile of debris sits at the edge of a sidewalk. No rebuilding has gone on partly due to lack of finances for large scale reconstruction. So apartment complexes are devoid of life—no cars, no bikes, no kids.


Our next stop was a home dedication in New Orleans East. If you look at the map (see end of this post) of the section that we visited, and increase the resolution, you see a lot of blue—those are NOT swimming pools. Those are blue tarps slung over roofs that were damaged when Katrina winds ripped away the tiles.

New Orleans East was long outside the city of New Orleans’ limits, but in the early 20th century people began to build permanent homes there, as suburbs spread out. Initially, it was planned to be an area for wealthier whites, but they moved elsewhere, so middle class African-Americans, escaping poor areas in the downtown, moved there.

A combination of the effect of Hurricane Katrina itself, and the resulting breeching of the levees, caused much of the area to flood and with it the homes. The rebuilt home that we went to help dedicate was one such place. This place is now the home of Carol and Rudy. When Katrina hit, they were living elsewhere, and their home at that time was a single story home that was flooded with 11 feet of water in it. It was damaged beyond repair. So they were moved into a FEMA trailer. They tried to rebuild a semblance of their former lives, but the situation simply overwhelmed them. By his own words, Rudy suffered a near break-down. He would go to his sister-in-law’s house, and say—I just can’t stay in that trailer anymore.



The sister-in-law lived in New Orleans East, and nearby her place was a storm damaged house for sale. This house had 18 inches of water inside it, so it could be rehabbed. Here is where PDA stepped in. Because Carol and Rudy met the financial criteria, they qualified for rebuilding assistance. After they bought the house, and it was gutted, Rudy, still unable to stand staying in the trailer, would go into his new but damaged house and just sit on the floor.


In a city that had 80 % of its land mass flooded, that had 90 % of its resident evacuated, that had most of its protective levees breached which caused the majority of the flooding—in this city, it was a moment of sweet grace to stand in Carol and Rudy’s home. We gathered there, volunteers, visitors, Carol and Rudy and some of their family members—joining hands and singing “Amazing Grace.”


Thank goodness I have this image to replace the negative ones that haunt me: people stranded on roof tops, pleading to be rescued; people hacking their way out of their attics using axes they had placed there in a prior hurricane; pets wandering totally abandoned because their owners were forbidden to take them along; thousands gathered at the Superdome begging for someone, anyone to rescue them; police standing on the Gretna Bridge firing shots over the heads of people fleeing New Orleans; Michael Chertoff blithely responding on the evening news that he was unaware of a problem at the Superdome; President Bush standing in front of St. Louis Cathedral bathed in white light with no one around.

Amazing grace?—you bet. The deliverers of that grace are the true New Orleans’ saints—the people who survived and are rebuilding, and the volunteers from church organizations and from other organizations who come to help.

This statue of the Virgin Mary stands outside Rudy & Carol's new home

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This is the last post on my visit to New Orleans and Mississippi. As I write this, I am listening to Fresh Air with Terri Gross interviewing Terence Blanchard who wrote music called "A Requiem for Katrina" to accompany Spike Lee's film A Tale of God's Will. And, of course, currently in the news are the fires in California, where 1 million people have fled their homes. Perhaps the lessons of Katrina will help others in disasters.
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Map of New Orleans East--click on + to increase resolution and see blue tarp roofs

View Larger Map

Village People

Let me describe the conditions at Pearlington Volunteer Village.

Every volunteer who comes to work at this village for a week is given critical information to make sure no one is surprised. People sleep in pods—these are plastic huts that are set up on wooden floors. The village managers are working on getting air conditioning and heating into each pod, since the outdoor heat can be excessive, and the pods have no insulation or means of keeping cool. The pods have no electricity, though that is being worked on.

Meals are eaten communally. Everyone shares breakfast, and then gets set to head of to work sites. If they are not within easy access to the Baptist church doing the lunch feedings, the volunteers pack a lunch to take along. Then they head out for the day’s work.

People are advised to bring their own tools, and supplies if possible. The work that is being done varies depending upon the condition of the house being worked on. Most of the mucking out, of clearing debris, and tearing out ruined interiors, has been done. Now comes the rebuilding, or even the total building. Once framing is in place, dry wall is installed, electrical wiring put in place, plumbing done. Obviously, the difference between the mucking out stage and the rebuilding stage has changed the demand for work level skill. Now the great need is for people who know what they are doing with the electrical and plumbing stage. Of course, once the interior work is done, painting needs to be done.

After the long day of work, volunteers return to the village, and shower. The sinks for washing up, shaving or brushing teeth are outdoors. Toilets are porta-potties. I refrained from taking a photo of those!

Some of the volunteers come along to cook. The kitchen is probably the most civilized looking portion of the village.
Each evening, the group holds devotions. Many people who have made the trip reflect on the need to process what they have seen and what they are doing. The evening devotions helps to lend a time of quieting, of settling their minds.

Even with these most primitive of conditions, we met people at lunch who were returning for their second, or even third trip. Many faith groups and other groups continue to respond to the incredible need of this area. Frankly, without these volunteers, it is difficult to imagine that governmental agencies would have known what to do, much less muster the will and resources to do it.

The items hanging from the support beams of the dining tent are the name tags of volunteer workers who have come and gone--leaving their tags behind is a kind of symbolic way of leaving a bit of their hearts behind.

Down in the Bayou

On the first day of our multi-day advisory committee meeting, we went touring. At 7:30 in the morning, we left New Orleans and drove east along I-10. Just as we crossed the Mississippi state line, we exited on to U.S. Route 190, connecting to Route 90. Within 10 miles, we were entering the small “town” of Pearlington.

Pearlington is really a “census-designated place.” I am not sure, but I suspect that is government-ese for “this town isn’t big enough to be called a town, but people are living here. . . so we’ll DESIGNATE it as a place.” About 1,600 people live there, of whom 77% are white and 20% black.

So, why all this information on Pearlington? Well, this little place was effectively ground zero when Katrina hit. The eye wall of the hurricane passed right over Pearlington. Here’s how someone who is keeping a blog about the recovery described it:

It is impossible to comprehend, in the comfort of our own homes, what it must be like to lose everything in a single day.
On Monday, August 29th, just after 10:00 a.m. local time, Hurricane Katrina made landfall, with the eastern eye wall directly over Pearlington, MS - sparing New Orleans the direct hit. Every home, building and vehicle in this town of 1600 was destroyed. If that wasn’t enough, a storm surge travelled 4.5 miles inland and drowned what little was left under 12-20 feet of the most toxic stew imaginable.
Since that day, a hardy coalition of volunteers - representing almost every faith, state, Canadian province, two European nations and an eastern Asian country - have travelled regularly to Pearlington to rebuild this forgotten bayou town.

Source:

http://pearlington.blogspot.com/

While there are several churches in Pearlington, many of them some type of Baptist, there is no Presbyterian church there. Yet, I am told, the Presbyterians were among the first disaster recovery people there. One of the lessons we learned (mentioned in the previous blog) is that for volunteers to come and help rebuild, they need a place to stay. So Presbyterian Disaster Assistance (PDA) has set up a series of Volunteer Villages. One of these is in Pearlington.

We first met with some of the volunteer leaders, then headed off to lunch. The place for lunch was the fellowship hall of the First Missionary Baptist Church. Its sanctuary (pictured above in a photo gleaned from another website) had been rendered unusable by the storm, but the Fellowship Hall, once scrubbed out, stood strong. So the pastor and his congregation decided their ministry would be feeding whoever came to town to work, and anyone else, for that matter. They have continued this ministry now for more than 2 years.

Lunch was freshly caught fish, Southern fried, rice, green beans and ham, corn, cole slaw, salad, fruit salad, and corn bread. I was really struck by the simple but sumptuous meal. During our meeting, I had led devotions for our group, using the account of the miracle of loaves and fishes where Jesus fed the 5,000. And now at lunch, here we all sat, side by side, white and black, town people, volunteers from every place, even a crew of county inmates who were doing yard clean-up, eating "loaves" and fish.

Everywhere we walked in this little town, we could see newly built houses. We also saw trailers scattered here and there. We saw dogs that just wandered into the volunteer village and stayed. The scene was chaotic, and very like a developing nation. It did not look much like the United States that most of us are accustomed to seeing.

But the place moved me. Pearlington will come back. People have stayed there. The one by-product of the storm that the workers there told us of is the new founded cooperation. They said—before the storm, black and white people tended not to interact much—but now they do. Storms bring adversity, but they also unite us.

This small child played in the muddy driveway leading to his family's trailer, right next to the Fellowship Hall of the First Missionary Baptist Church.

The First Missionary Baptist Church, as it is being rebuilt.