Tuesday, January 10, 2006
 Ross Baird, College of Arts & Sciences
You know, when you hear about the devastation of Katrina, often it comes in plain numbers, 200,000 homes destroyed by water. In many ways, the past couple of days have balanced perception with reality. In our class last week, we reviewed a lot of these numbers. Being on the ground, however, allows us to understand the sheer magnitude of these numbers and exactly what they mean.
Today, we were in New Orleans East gutting a house that was flooded in the hurricane and had been untouched since. We walked into the house of a guidance counselor at Xavier Prep and saw moldy couches, ruined clothing, and waterlogged bookshelves. In a day's work, the twenty of us were able to entirely gut the house, removing all her belongings and appliances, tearing out sheetrock and insulation, and scraping wood paneling until the house was a shell. The transformation was stunning, and we were happy to do our part. But this was just one house on one block. There are 200,000 houses like this, and it took a full day's work of 20 college students just to handle one property. We had a six-foot tall pile of trash on the street, and the trash needs to go somewhere. The woman whose house it was needs to decide whether to rebuild it or move somewhere else. And there are 200,000 households like hers. Talk about numbers.
At the same time, we were very happy to help and we realized what we are doing is important. Pat [Lampkin] talked to the woman over the phone several times throughout the day, and let her know that we were able to salvage several sentimental items from the house, such as photos, silver, and her wedding dress. Hearing this woman's story--how she had fled the hurricane, was living in Houston, and didn't know her next move--and seeing devastated houses throughout the whole district, and realizing that every house has a similar story--that's a lot to wrap our minds around. Tomorrow the City of New Orleans is releasing its official rebuilding plan, but we're seeing first-hand what that's going to mean on the ground.
And driving to and from the sites is interesting, too. We drive down Magazine Street, the old antique district, which was barely flooded and, fortunately, is coming back well. But then you drive past a block where the floodlines come up seven feet and the businesses aren't even close to returning. Bourbon Street was back on New Year's Eve, and we see Mardi Gras returning, and many of the homes are fine, but the entire city needs both the wealthy and the poor to run. The business owners put a lot into the economy, and the lower-income residents hold a lot of the low-income service jobs that are necessary, too.
A simple drive down Carrolton Street, like we took today, will show both.
I don't think the public's perception goes adequately beyond Bourbon Street and Mardi Gras, though. I personally had no idea from the news coverage that we all see that things were this desperate in many parts of the city. I hope that one of the things our class can do is help people realize what's going down here. Our work of the past two days (and this whole week) may just be a "drop in the bucket", as we keep hearing from the folks leading the trip. But as long as I'm talking about numbers--the bucket down here needs a lot of drops.
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