It has been almost three weeks since we began preparing for Gustav. We evacuated to Meridian, MS. Gustav has come and gone and Ike came as close to us as I really want to be to a really bad storm.
Recovering from the damage of those storms has been time-consuming, emotionally draining and physically exhausting. Most of our staff has worked 6-7 days a week, many of them 9 or 10 hour days for the majority of those three weeks.
We have volunteers coming into Orange Grove (Gulfport) and Olive Tree (New Orleans) Sunday. The next weekend we have volunteers coming into Pearlington and Luling. We have little time to rest to get ready for them.
Late last week I was in Pearlington. Pearlington has our attention because that Village sustained so much damage and volunteers are coming in another week. Although we packed out almost all our high-value tools from our two sea containers and filled them with our cots, mattresses, heaters and air conditioners and large dining tent; Gustav flooded the containers with about two feet of water, leaving behind a nice present of mold.
Gustav floated away our pods (“tents”) and damaged several beyond repair. We pressure washed the stinking mud and detritus from the concrete and then fished most of the pods out of the swamp onto the concrete using chains, ropes and straps with a back hoe, a pickup truck, a four-wheeler recreational cart and brute force.
Then after all that, Ike came along. Although it never approached closer than about 200 miles, the surge from it undid everything we had done to recover from Gustav. All the pods were back into the swamp. We have had to recover those in the same way.
Yesterday we managed to get all our surviving pods back into the rough formation we want thanks to the fork lift provided by the graciousness of the Laignappe Church in Bay Saint Louis. We’ve had to cut trenches in our concrete pad for new wiring. (That concrete pad is the parking lot of the former post office.) The water damaged much of our ground-level electrical wiring at Pearlington. We have dug trenches for electric line and new propane lines. Now we wait on the electricians and the propane company.
Our pods and main tent at Houma Village were completely destroyed by Gustav and Ike. Because we were not able to pack out the cots and mattresses, or get them into the sea container on site a large proportion of them were destroyed, as was the big tent. I am not sure when we will be able to bring in volunteers to Houma.
Our Luling Village on the north side of New Orleans out near Lafourche Parish was spared a lot of damage. We lost a couple of pods. This was miraculous since near by parishes of Lafourche and Terrebonne were severely damaged. The last I heard, Terrebonne is still without power and has a serious problem with the water supply.
Several of us spent a very hard full day last weekend at Luling cutting up all the broken trees and limbs with chain saws and dragging the result to the curb. This weekend Leslie, our Volunteer Village Coordinator and son and friends went back to finish cleanup and painting.
We are exhausted and everyone is on edge. This is unbelievably hard work. Some of our staff are not prepared for this sacrifice. They cannot deal with the long-term stress and physical demands. I can’t criticize them for it as I am stressed myself and more than a little tired.
A lot of folks come down with full intention to help but expect a more laid-back situation within which that big hurricane (Katrina) is a past meteorological anomaly. If one has not had the experience of dealing with long periods of sustain high stress, physical labor, and inherently dangerous weather; burnout is a common consequence.
We forget that we work in a geography where hurricanes are part of the historical record. On top of our recent struggles another tropic disturbance lurking in the Hispaniola area shows signs of intensifying. I fear that if this storm grows and threatens us; a few of our staff may not have the strength to sustain the effort to remain to help.
Nevertheless these challenges will pass and even be replaced by others. We must always be mindful that we are charged with the mission of our church, a charge that lies at the hearth of Christianity to give the gifts of our own blessings to help the homeless, the poor, the widow, the downtrodden people who survived Katrina, Gustav and Ike.
We will do our best to prevail with that charge with an humble and broken spirit.
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