Katie White's Onsite Journal
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| Katie White provides us a mid-duty report as she
began her second week in Louisiana. |
| I am currently in Louisiana serving with CityTeam. I
have been here for a week and will be home in a week. I thought that
I would give you an update while I have the chance and remember. |
| We are located at a shelter in Baker Louisiana, which
is a little bit North of Baton Rouge. I am at Bethany Church, which
held 1600 evacuees at one point. When I got here there were only
about 15 people still here as most of the others were transferred to
trailers already. Most of who are left include single males and
handicaps. In an effort to keep us busy and helpful, we cleaned out
a house in the seventh ward of New Orleans for a man who has been
more than helpful at the shelter. It was hard to imagine, but the
water line was about 6 or 7 feet up. It was difficult to be with
someone who was going back to his own house for the first time. You
could see his frustration, anger, disappointment, and pain. At some
points he just began pounding the wall to get these emotions out.
Many of these people think that they are going to be able to move
back to their homes, but there is no way that will be possible
unless they demolish the house and start over. There is mold
everywhere. I know that you see it on TV, but you don't realize that
it is really everywhere. There was the eerie feel of a ghost town.
All of the grass and landscaped yards were yellow and brown because
everything was covered in water and mud for so long. The sidewalk
still had mud stuck to it. |
| There are three things that stick out in my mind from
the experience. 1) The Smell. I thought that it was smelly outside
the house, but once we got inside it reeked of must, mold, and such
mixed with that similar to a dead body. And all of that was what
came through the masks that we wore. 2) The Mold. There is mold over
everything. The ceiling fan looked like a flower that was covered in
fuzz and wilted. The water had caused the blades to turn downward
and hang from where they were fixed. We wore rubber boots to keep
our feet protects from the muck that was still present. 3) Water
still everywhere. Where there was carpet, the ground still squished
under us. When I attempted to pick up an empty dresser drawer, it
simply collapsed as though it was just melting out of my hands. The
deviation is so far-reaching that it is hard to believe. There was
an entire city of houses that this happened to, and some were
probably worse |
| A couple of days later, more people were transferred
to our shelter because theirs was closing. We had about 50, but
those numbers are lower because people are slowly getting transfer
to trailers. About half our group stays to help around the shelter
while the other half goes to TerryTown in New Orleans to work on a
food distribution line. We pack boxes of food and possibly some
shampoo or laundry detergent (depending on what we have at the time)
and give them out to cars that wait for over an hour. It is a long,
hot process, but the people are so thankful. It takes about two
hours to get there, if there is no traffic, but there is always
traffic in the evening because all the people who are working to
restore New Orleans during the day sleep outside the town at night. |
| I am sorry that I am a little long-winded, but I hope
that gives you a glimpse of what we have been doing down here. We
don't know what will come in the future. We just hope that we can
help touch some people's lives. |
-Katie White
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Contact
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| To volunteer or get more info about volunteering, please
fill out the volunteer form. |
| For questions about a particular activity within the Katrina
Recovery Ministries, please feel free to contact any team
leaders mentioned on the web page, or contact Terri
Goehner. |
| For questions or concerns about locating information about
the Katrina Recovery Ministries on this website, please
contact Rich
Clewett. |
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