I met Miss Katie on a rainy day late last June. I’d been given her case file to go out and assess what damage Katrina had been done to her home. They got no surge up there, just over 100 mile per hour wind and a lot of rain.
It was a good drive up to the north end of the county. I was racing a nasty-looking thunderstorm coming in from the east off the Gulf. Big wind driven dollops of rain splattered my windshield but the rain held off until I was about a quarter mile from her house.
I drove up into her driveway past her well. The wellhead had a piece of broken white PVC pipe attached and a loose electrical wire sprawled on the ground. About this time the whole bottom started falling out.
I looked over at the brick ranch-style house and saw a spry figure of an elderly woman standing in the doorway. I hopped out, slammed the door of the truck and ran through the rain towards her as a sharp crack of thunder announced the storm’s arrival.
“It’s about time you all came back to fix my house! Where is my mantle? You know, the one that was over my fireplace. You took it almost three years ago and said you’d keep it safe until the work was done. My husband made that mantle and its all I have left to remember him!”
"I’m sorry, ma’am, but I’ve never been out her and our crews have never worked here.”
"Don’t you tell me that? I would recognize those blue shirts anywhere!”
“Miss Katie, a couple of organizations wear these shirts. I am pretty sure it wasn’t us.”
“They had the same shirts.”
“Miss Katie, whatever happened, I was sent out here to look at your home and figure out what needs to be done.”
“You can look around and see. Look at those ceilings, they came in and tore out the old drywall and put up a new ceiling- and to take the cake, they just covered my attic access. There is a door under that drywall somewhere.”
From my quick look I could tell it was a pretty poor drywall job. There were cakes of joint compound dried to the floor. It has been there since a couple months after Katrina hit. The living room rug hadn’t been pulled up and there were cakes of joint compound on it. They had ripped out the kitchen linoleum but nothing was finished. Water was pouring off the roof, there were no gutters.
“What about my locks? You took all my locks and said you’d be back to replace them but never came back. We have to screw boards over the door to keep the teenagers out. We caught some of them in here once with their girl friends and beer.”
“Miss Katie, I assure you my group was not involved with the work. We will be sure your house gets back right.”
The more I looked the more disgusted I became. I was going to find out exactly who would have done this. I could not imagine that a group would start in on a job and then walk away and let this poor woman sit or over 2 and one-half years living in a trailer abandoned and forgotten.
I had a good idea who it was. Miss Katie described the leader and his distinctive characteristics pointed to one person in a local church group who had fought viciously over their having a predominant role in rebuilding after Katrina.
“Miss Katie, I’m about done with my measuring. Does your air conditioning work?”
“No, the compressor is shot. You people didn’t even take out all the insulation in the attic. It is all moldy and my son has been pulling it out a little at a time. The ducts in the attic are all moldy too, you know.”
“I’ll make a note of that, and that you need gutters to get the water away from the house.”
After I finished my estimates I gave the file to our case manager liaison. It took her a few weeks but we got Miss Katie funded by the same group who had funded the first construction partner that did the miserable job. This time we are the partner and I’m going to be sure this job gets done right.
This week I had put the case in my work plan for September/October and sent an e-mail to the agency to let Julie, the case manager, know my intent. We exchanged a few words of amazement and regret that Miss Katie had sat for so long waiting for completion of a partly started rehab job. We both will have some satisfaction to see it completed.
Then today I get a new e-mail from Julie.
“Mr. Paris, I had been trying for over a week to contact Miss Katie about her house and to let her know it the repairs were funded. Today I was able to talk to her good friend Gladys who happened to be in Miss Katie’s trailer.”
“Julie, Miss Katie won’t be needing the repair work now.”
“Oh, really? What happened?”
“Miss Katie came down with pneumonia a couple weeks ago. They had her in the hospital all last week and released her Friday.”
“Well I’m glad she is out, is she doing better?”
“Miss Katie died Saturday night in her sleep. The doctor said her lungs filled with fluid and she suffocated, drowned in her own fluids. That old pneumonia finished what Katrina couldn’t. We buried her Monday.”
Since I have to carry the guilt of another person’s error, I would like to find than mantle and bring it back to Miss Katie’s friend. At least she would know that someone cared.
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