KATRINA TRIP 6

MARCH 13-21, 2009

It's official - CSF is headed back to the Gulf Coast this spring for our 6th Katrina Relief Trip! This time we'll be working with and staying at a church in one of the New Orleans suburbs. Jobs probably include roofing, drywalling, mudding, taping, and/or painting, depending on what the needs are at the time. Feel free to invite lots of friends - the more the better!

We will be driving down and the trip will include a day of sight-seeing. The cost for the trip is $300 plus meals on the way down and back. There will also be some options for fundraising by cleaning Ridder Arena - dates to be announced closer to the trip. For more details or with questions email Amy at brow1876@umn.edu.

POSTED ON 7/10/08

No crawfish were harmed it the making of this blog

Dearest fans,

It's Amy back again to report on the day's happenings. It was our last day of work (boohoo!), and we sure went out with a bang. On Isaiah's house, our team (the Browns, the Katies, Steve I, Scott, Micah, and Lauren) sanded and put in another layer of mud, leaving sanding and painting for the next team. Let me tell you, sanding down mudded walls in tiny rooms with no ventilation made us all feel like we were going to die. And by the time we were done, we were all covered in a layer of white dust that made us look like we were ghosts or had aged 70 years in an hour. But after we got over that little hump, it was free sailing to get that last layer of mud up. It was utterly amazing to see the inside of that house be transformed throughout the week. When we first got there on Monday, the three rooms were not rooms at all. You could see from one end of the house to the other (just studs, no insulation or anything), there was a hole the size of a bathtub in the bathroom, and everything seemed rotted and dark. When we left today, there were three rooms (with walls!), all the floors were solid, doors up, and it was bright and cheery. The work went fast today, which meant that as a reward for our efficiency we got first dibs on showers.

The Tree Guys (as we affectionately call Tim, Steve S, Anthony, and Nigel), returned to Beryl's house. They spent the morning playing baseball, while waiting for a trailer to arrive. Once Brad brought them the appropriate tools and they used their studdly muscles to pull up a stump, and finished clearing brush. They got treated to lunch for all the hard work that they did, and had the awesome opportunity to spend time with their homeowner. From there they headed over to the other other team's site to help out.

The other other team (Zeb, Sam, Derek, Sarah, Ben, Emmy, Jenny, Conner, Liz, Mike, and Puva) were working on Leeanne's house again today. From the sound of it, they did A LOT of miscellaneous yet productive things. Conner, Sam, Liz, and Sarney slaved away tiling a bedroom, while Mike walked by frequently commenting on how nice it looked. The tiling left quite a bit to be desired, the describing statements were "tumultuous, trying, and frustrating". Outside, they installed a door, moved a washer inside and installed it, and rocked out putting siding up. After the Tree Guys joined them and helped out a bit, Nigel and Tim crafted a crude but accurate cricket bat, and Tim took a few lessons in the art of the sport. The consensus is, that even though it was a hard day, it was also very rewarding and fun.

So here we are, chilling at base camp, enjoying the final moments we have before being locked up in vans for the next 24 odd hours. The sun is shining and the temperature is hovering some where in the high seventies. We will soon be piling our sore, sun burnt, tired bodies into the Great White Vans, an event that none of us are looking forward too. Until then, it's a few more episodes of the Office, sloppy joes, and some final cat naps.

See you when we surface...

Now

French fries, french tender, and once again the French Quarter

Hey everyone, Nigel Bennett here.

Well today has yet again been a successful day down here in New Orleans. Isaiah’s house is really looking like a liveable place again which is very rewarding. We finished putting up the sheet rock at last and the rest of the finishing team mudded up the walls and sanded everything down. The other team continued cleaning up the wood mess at the old lady’s house. They accomplished clearing a wood pile the size of a small bus. Tough work and all beat at the end of the day. But since this is New Orleans, most of us went to the French quarter to have dinner and socialize again. The owner of the place where we stayed came round to say hi. He kindly took me and Scott (Micah’s Dad) for a short tour of the area. Wow, we didn’t have to drive all the way into the city to see the damage caused by Katrina. The houses around here sustained five feet of water causing absolute havoc. Houses built up along the lake and swamp edge were just washed away. We saw one of these houses just sitting in a clump on the side of the road still untouched. As you know the folks down here like their seafood and pack it all into big deep freezes. Well as you can guess when the flood hit and the houses were evacuated, this stuff began to rot and became putrid seafood. It’s apparently the most disgusting smell on earth and causes one to throw up instantaneously. Volunteers would come in to help gut the houses. Being hot and summer, someone would out of natural instinct just open the fridge to look for a bottle of water, only to throw up immediately. To solve this problem, the freezers were the first to be taken out of the houses. Gutting the house even included taking the sheet rock off the walls and removing the insulating foam. About 12 people are needed to complete gutting one house in a single days work. More than twelve people and everyone starts to bump into each other. The walls, floors and ceilings are sprayed with heavy bleach and later sprayed again with mould protector. So altogether it’s been a long road to recovery. However, even today, almost three years later, there are still houses all over the place that are condemned and have not even been touched since the flood waters receded. Truly a humbling experience as to the power of water.

It was a productive day, and tomorrow is the last day...

Midterm Evaluation

Well folks, we have just passed the midpoint of Spring Break 2008. The third day of work has come and gone, and it is safe to say that we are all still alive and well. We woke up this morning to some claps of thunder and rain pouring down, unfortunately, in some cases pouring through the roof. Nothing a couple of buckets couldn't fix. But as rain down here does, it came and it went, and by the time we left at 8, the raindrops slowed and let us have a day free of sogginess. Half of the team returned to Isaiah's house, where we continued hanging sheetrock, mudding/taping, putting in window sills and so on. The rest of the group headed over to North Shore Relief's headquarters to lobby for a new work site. And they were successful. Four of the boys were taken over to a house that had a yard strewn with fallen trees, and were entrusted with chainsaws to clear it out. The others have been assigned a house in need of a new roof, some new interior walls, and other miscellaneous jobs. They didn't get much done, after waiting to find out where to go, going there to check out the situation, and then going to get supplies, it was time to head back to our base camp.

As Dale from our host organization had suggested, we took half the day off today. The afternoon was filled with a nice relaxing lunch, a quick run to Goodwill, and then a self-guided tour to the 9th ward. For those of you who may not remember, the 9th ward sustained the worst damage after Hurricane Katrina. Being lined by levees, basically lumps of land seperating habitable land from canals leading to Lake Pontchartrain, the 9th ward is in a very venerable position. A pastor of a church that we drove past told us that flood waters reached over 24 feet in some places. Even now, 2 and a half years later, the neighborhoods look devastated. It's hard to tell what the real damage is by looking from the outside. We don't know the stories of all the people, nor how bad things are on the inside. As we drove through, there would be a house almost fully recovered with people living in it, next to a completely abandoned one, next to one in the process of being recovered. We stopped to get out, and as we were walking around, we noticed several houses had large official-looking red X's. Each one read: "Involuntary Demolition". These were houses that were "seemingly abandoned" that were condemned to be demolished by the local government. Across the street was an old mansion, that some of our team decided to check out. This may not have been the smartest decision of the trip, considering it was private property and one of the locals called the cops on us. Brad talked to the very nice sheriff, who pointed out areas of the city with the greatest damage for us. When asked if there was some sort of monument to commemorate the floods, he said to look at the water lines that were still prominent on many houses. Thus concluded our trip to the inner city.

After eating a delicious dinner, we decided that it would be a nice evening to go to the beach. We are on the Gulf Coast for crying out loud. So we piled everyone into the vans (once again...), and hopped the border into Mississippi. We soon stumbled upon a roadside beach, parked the vans, and piled out to stick our toes in the Gulf. There followed a bonfire, which took quite a while to get started considering the overwhelmingly forceful wind. Alas, boy scout skills proved useful, and before long there were hot dogs and marshmallows out. Unfortunately, with Nigel's guitar out of commission, there was no singing, but we stayed entertained with friendly conversation. The tide was low, so many of us ventured out into unknown waters and sandbars. All and all what a way to end the day, but to gather with a bunch of friends around a fire on the beach.
We definitely appreciate all of your prayers and support, so thanks for that. And more than anything we need prayer to have the strength and energy to keep going.

Sorry for the absence of pictures again, but the hour is late and we have a full day of work tomorrow, and the internet here lacks the speed to be able to upload pictures in a decent amount of time...



...So until next time, this is Amy Brown signing off

Don't worry, no trips to the hospital....yet

Well another day has come and gone in the beautiful city of New Orleans. We were all still working on the same house, and made GREAT progress. The roofing half of the team made a fantastic finish today (woohoo!), and will hopefully be assigned another work site tomorrow. The sheetrockers have almost finished with hanging the sheetrock, and should be moving on to mudding and taping sometime tomorrow. Since we slacked yesterday and didn't offer any visual stimulation for all the words in this blog, today you will get an extra dose....So sit back, relax and let your eyes do the work.

This is our house. Well, okay Isaiah's house, but we're taking it over for the week.



Katie K is ready to work, nice muppet gloves!




The first day of work involved lots of neck straining for the sheetrocking team. Back rub anyone?



Mr McLellan (this year's construction guru) and Lauren show that wall who's boss.




Gosh Brad, sitting down on the job again...What will we do with you?

Look at them go! The roofing team prepares for the next day of shingling.



Anthony and Tim work hard to get those shingles going. Keep up the good work boys.

Time for a break!




Derek spends half his days playing old-fashioned photographer, and the rest of his time helping us out. His pictures won't be available until some time is spent in the dark room after we get back. That's right, FILM pics, baby.



Oh, by the way, today was Tim Roser's 20th birthday, so we took it upon ourselves to make sure he would remember it for a very very long time...

Why yes, they are nailing him to the roof...

Woah, Steve, getting a little close are we?

And to top it all off, a black caulk smiley face. Happy Birthday Tim!

narrated by csf's one and only amy brown

We've been workin all the day long

This is interim Amy, Sam and Zeb. We hope you are having a good day. We have had a great one here in New Orleans. It was the first day of work and the team was ready to get started. In Slidell, LA, the town which we are staying, we drove to the Methodist church this morning to get our assignments for the week. It started with a really interesting speech by the head of United Methodist Relief Committee on Relief for this region. He said that Slidell itself is currently 85% restored, and they planned to be done by August with the Slidell area. Following that encouraging bit of news he also gave some news that was not as heartening; New Orleans itself was only 5% complete on their total repairs. This means that after Slidell repairs are complete it will focus more so on the city itself. He also said that they report all our hours that we are completing this week to the state which reports it to the federal government. The government is giving Louisiana just over eighteen dollars per hour per person to pay back the federal government. With this so far this has generated over nineteen million dollars. It is encouraging that our work will be doubly received by the people here…thirdly if you think of the spiritual nourishment this is providing as well. On our end, the spiritual nourishment it is providing us is worth it as well.

...Back to the trip, the assignment we were given, interestingly enough was all at the same house. It needed roofing, drywall, structural, and some insulation work. Both the teams were able to work on the same house. This worked great today and we already made great progress. We still broke up into two loose groups and started the work as soon as we got the materials. The person whose house we were working on was named Isaiah. He is a very kind old man who loves his game shows. We are going to try to have lunch with him tomorrow and get his story of the storm and some more information about his past. In other news, the food is great thanks to the hard work of Amanda and Leah. The sunburn hasn’t completely set in yet for us so that is well as well… but we are using plenty of sunscreen to make sure that doesn’t happen too quickly. They also recommend that we drink eight bottles of water a day to battle the pretty intense heat.

All in all, it was quite a productive day. As would be expected, we got off to a slightly slow start, but the afternoon was full of hard work. 24 people working on a small house is a little tight. But we've been trying hard not to step on each others toes too much. Having lots of people does make the work speed along, though. We'll keep you updated on the events of the week....so stay tuned.

So, do to some minor minor technical difficulties, there will be no pictures for your viewing pleasure. But do not fear! There will be a flood tomorrow...

Lazy Sunday?

Blockbuster worship, alligator adventures and a stroll through the historic French Quarter. Not exactly the lazy Sunday we might be accustomed to on spring break. So here is your quick update from the first full day in Louisiana for Katrina Relief 08!

This morning we got up at the crack of 8ish and prepared for a jam packed day of events. The group grabbed a quick fruit based breakfast and hopped in the vans to go to church. We attended Journey Christian Church for Palm Sunday. The church is located in a movie theater and the service was rocking! The most comfortable seats I have ever sat on for a church service in my opinion. On a freaky prophetic note Brad and I discussed the passage of scripture that was the basis for the message earlier that morning.

After church everyone was free to select the fast food restaurant of their pleasing. Taco Bell was the most popular selection but a small few ventured elsewhere. The weather outside was sunny but a tad windy yet it was still a great day compared to what we would be experiencing back home.

After lunch we went on a Katrina Relief traditional swap tour. This is basically us riding a boat around a swamp and checking out all the cool alligators and other various wildlife. NEW FACT: Marshmallows are the weapon of choice when attempting to attract the attention of the local alligator population. Our guide was funny and very knowledgeable and the boat ride was fun but most of the gators were doing nothing but basking in the same wonderful sun we were.

The last leg of our fun filled day took place in the French Quarter of New Orleans. This famous section of downtown was loaded with all kinds of shops and restaurants. The weather was warm early on but got chilly as the sun went down. Earlier in the day a performer asked for my assistance with mounting his unicycle. Other members of the group did a bit of shopping and everyone got some dinner, mostly seafood but some Italian food was consumed as well. After some random wandering everyone managed to get some beignets from famous Café Du Monde. All in all there was some cool statues, parks, street performers/musicians and architecture to been viewed. OBSERVATION - balconies are considered commonplace and were a part of many buildings.

Tomorrow is an early day for us as we attend orientation for this week and get the run down on what we will be doing. Hopefully we are all well rested and prepared to begin our week of work tomorrow. Until then here are some pictures to give you a visual insight to some of today’s events.

Everyone getting on the swamp tour boat

Taking in the sites of the swamp

Lazy Sunday for the gators


Lauren and Katie enjoying the sights and weather on the boat

Micah revelling in the messy aftermath of those delicious beignets (french doughnuts)

This post was written for your reading pleasure by Jon Brown

We made it...at long last!

Greetings family members, friends, and anyone else reading this post...

This is not Rebecca Lehmer, as the name may suggest, but rather a mere fill-in in her absence. (We miss you Rebecca!) This is Amy Brown reporting on the events so far of CSF's Spring Break 2008.

Well, we have safely arrived in Slidell, LA, a suburb of New Orleans. After 24 hours of van travel, we are, to say the least, exhausted. But mostly in high spirits as we embark on CSF's 5th trip to the South to participate in Hurricane Katrina relief work. The team this year consists of 26 hopeful workers, 11 women and 15 men. It is worth noting that this is perhaps the first major CSF event with a majority of males. We'll be split up into two work teams, one flooring team and one painting/finishing team, while Amanda and Leah will be staying back to cook for the rest of us. I don't think we have our specific assignments yet, but we'll find out soon enough.

The trek down from the north was fairly uneventful. We passed through too many states than we could keep track of, hit a couple of rainstorms, and lost all feeling in our behinds as we bumped down the highways. Kudos to our valiant drivers who made sure we were safe as we drove all night Friday and all day Saturday. The ride was broken up by periodic stops to fill up the vans and stretch our cramped legs, besides that there's not much to report.

While it may be below freezing in our hometown of St Paul, it is a balmy 74 degrees at 8:30 this evening in Slidell. Our dwelling for the next week is a refurbished limo rental place, that has been used as volunteer housing since the hurricanes hit. While forced to sleep on couches, air beds, and the floor last year, we are living it up on bunks this year. It is a cozy little building with a pink common room filled with seven plush couches, two tvs, and several tables. The kitchen is sizable, the bathrooms adequate, and the company wonderful.

Here are a few pictures to visually represent the trip so far...

Here we are, pre-take off.

Are we really going to New Orleans?! Really!?

24 hours in a van? No biggie...

Yes, we did indeed find a Sonic...

Micah is such an intense driver.

Stay tuned for our next post, where an alligator makes friends with Jon Brown on the swamp tour...