Katrina Relief Work Report (lots of pics)

[Sparky-Watts]

You've been waiting for it, and here it is, my brief report on the disaster relief trip to Moss Point, MS. There are lots of pics in this thread, and I apologize to the dialuppers for that, but remember, I'm a dialupper myself.

First of all, some statistics I've compiled from the trip:

We put a total of 2455.4 miles on the YJ over 44 hours and 24 minutes of driving.

We used a total of 148.661 gallons of gas, averaging 16.516 mpg.

Average fuel cost was $2.42/gal, total cost was $376.69. Highest was at Tallulah, LA at $2.67/gal, lowest was in Muskogee, OK at $1.99/gal.

Maximum speed on the trip was on the way down there, somewhere in Arkansas in the middle of the night at 91.0 mph!!! Didn't think the ol' YJ had it in her!! Proof:

Now, on with the story. I arrived at Dantzler United Methodist Church in Moss Point, MS at 8:45 am on Monday the 24th after driving 17 hours and 20 minutes through the night from the farm in eastern Kansas, where I'd attended our semi-annual family campout. The rest of the group had arrived sometime Sunday evening, and were already out working. I joined them at a doctor's office in Moss Point a few blocks from the church.

Moss Point and Pascagoula are basically one town, but separated by a main east-west street. Pascagoula sits on the Gulf, Moss Point is on the north side of Pascagoula, about 3.5 miles from the Gulf. The storm surge in Pascagoula was at 26 feet, with waves 10-15 feet above that. Most of the damage in Moss Point and Pascagoula came from the storm surge, while the rest was from winds up to 120 mph.

The doctor's office took about 4 feet of water, and our job was to gut it down to bare framing, ripping out all the sheetrock, cabinets, exam tables, etc. I immediately noticed on arrival that we were dealing with a lot of black mold. This is bad stuff. Really, really bad. It can cause severe respiratory problems, motor impairment, neurological impairment, and even death. I should have spoken up to the group, but at the time I was sleep deprived and didn't want to be a jerk, so I kept my mouth shut and worked in a part of the building where the mold wasn't so prevalent. Later that afternoon, the contractor came by and told us all what I should have told them, that it wasn't a good idea to be in there without the proper protection. In Kansas, you have to be licensed by the state to remove mold, and must wear EPA body suits and respirators to do so. Only a few of us were even wearing simple dust masks. So, we cancelled that project and went back to the church for supper.

Sunshine wanted to see the water down at the Gulf, so we loaded up in the YJ and headed down through Pascagoula....we had actually forgotten about the damage we might find in our desire to see the ocean. Once we got within a few blocks, we remembered pretty quickly. Pretty much every building, house, and tree within three blocks of the beach had been wiped out. It was really heartbreaking to see the beachfront drive, because we had passed through there a few years ago on the way to Georgia, and fell in love with all the huge, beautiful houses. This is some of what we found when we got down there:

 

[Sparky-Watts]

This used to be a Mazda pickup, I think:

As you can see, some houses remained standing, but were heavily damaged, while others were completely swept away.

 

[Sparky-Watts]

This one had the lower two floors swept away, dropping the roof down to ground level.

I stopped and talked to this guy a while about the storm. He's standing on what was his front porch of a beautiful 3-story colonial home. What you see behind him is exactly what he found after the storm, no clean up has been done here. He plans to rebuild, but he said the majority of his neighbors have decided not to rebuild and have put their property up for sale.

Sunshine and I were so disenchanted by all the damage we saw, we never returned to the beach.

 

[Sparky-Watts]

While we were working at the doctor's office, two other guys from the group were working on building a wheelchair ramp for an elderly couple a few blocks away. The woman had suffered a heart attack a week after the storm and had quadruple bypass surgery. She had walked around for 4 days, complaining of nausea, and thought she had food poisoning!! The same day she had her surgery, her husband fell and broke his right knee and shoulder, and had subsequently been laid up in a hospital and nursing home since then. His doctor couldn't release him until there was a way to get him into his house, hence the wheelchair ramp. On Tuesday, Sunshine and I, and a few others from the group went back and finished it up for them. Just look at the smile on her face and tell me we didn't make a difference:

Gene (the rather rotund guy in the pic) designed and engineered the ramp on the spot. He builds decks for a living, but had never built a ramp. I think he did an excellent job!

 

[Sparky-Watts]

On Wednesday, we took a trip down to Slidell, LA to help with clean up at the sister church there. Our group leader decided she wanted to go see New Orleans and the damage there, much to the dissent of the rest of the group. After being blocked by construction on the I-10 bridge, the caravan stopped at a coffee shop for breakfast, and pretty much everyone told her it wasn't a good idea to go down there. She seemed to give in and agree. We decided to drive down to the southern edge of Slidell and look at some of the damage along Lake Ponchartrain. Before we knew it, we had driven across an undamaged bridge and into New Orleans. Sunshine and I were in the YJ, and two others were in a Mustang ahead of us, all following the group leader and the rest of the group in the van. When they finally pulled over in an uninhabited part of New Orleans to find a restroom (yeah, right), I told Judy (our group leader) in no uncertain terms that we should not be there. We had no business in New Orleans, and were nothing more than rubberneckers and a hindrance to the crews down there trying to do cleanup. Her first clue should have been the very heavily armed national guardsmen on every street corner. The rest of the group echoed my sentiments, much to the chagrin of Judy, and we returned to Slidell. Here are a few of the pics along Lake Ponchartrain south of Slidell:

 

[Sparky-Watts]

Any building left standing had a spray-painted triage message on it from rescue workers, showing how many people were supposed to live there, how many had been there upon searching, and how many were found dead. It was a grim reminder emblazoned everywhere we looked. For instance, here was the office of an apartment complex. It's hard to see in the pic, but the triage message shows there were supposed to be 5 souls in the building, and 3 of them were found dead:

Also, all along the lake, anywhere in these pictures where you see pilings sticking up out of the ground or water, there was either a house or building of some sort that was destroyed. Here is one house that was floated/blown several hundred yards over the roadway to come to rest against another building:

 

[Sparky-Watts]

I don't know what kind of business this was, but according to all the signs around it, it was open for business when we drove by! I was amazed at the number of businesses that were open despite having gaping holes in the roofs and walls, but I guess ya gotta do what ya gotta do!

For the most part, folks down there were extrememly glad to have us there, it seemed to give them hope that someone cared. Most of them said that if it weren't for the church groups like ours, they wouldn't have any assistance at all. They were all waiting for FEMA to inspect their homes and businesses, and nobody can make any permanent repairs until that happens. They can tear out the damaged walls, cart off debris, throw tarps on the roofs, and board up doors and windows, but nothing permanent until FEMA inspects it, otherwise they lose their FEMA money. Pretty sad.

The church in Slidell had taken on 5 feet of water, ruining pretty much everything in the church. They left this window unwashed to show the water line:

They had already gutted the sanctuary when we got there:

 

[Sparky-Watts]

Thursday, we went to work with the chainsaws and took out some major tree damage...it was what I had been waiting for, because I got to use the mighty YJ to drag around some big trees!! Our first house had a tree that was around 60-70 feet in length that had dropped into the crotch of another tree, and was balanced there. We could grab the low hanging limbs and make it rock back and forth pretty easily, so I didn't figure it'd be too much of a job for the YJ.....boy, was I wrong!! This thing easily weighed 1.5-2 tons!! At first, I had it in 2-hi with the strap looped around the front tow hooks so I could see what was going on. I slowly backed up, expecting the tree to drop the 20 feet or so to the ground. The back tires started spinning on the dry grass. So, I went into 4wd and tried again, only to kill the engine when the slack came out of the strap. Down to 4-lo, and tugging really hard on the strap now, the front end swung around inline with the strap until the wheels spun again. I pulled forward and slammed back against the strap once, twice, three times....finally, on the 4th tug, the tree came crashing down, shaking the earth so hard I could feel it through the seat on the YJ!!

Me tugging the tree across the yard:

I even got some (almost) damage when I clipped the end of a stump while dragging a tree across the yard:

 

[Sparky-Watts]

I used the YJ to pull all the trees out to the street for the guys to whack up with the chainsaws, so they could be stacked there for the other clean up crews to retrieve. There were several very large trees, but none matched the first one I yanked down. Here are a few more shots of the trees we moved and cut up, as well as some of the group I was with:

 

[Sparky-Watts]

We had to cut this one up where it was because otherwise, I would have pulled the rest of the fence out with it:

The guy on the left is Pat. He was from Lumpkin, GA and had been staying at the church in Moss Point since the week of the storm doing relief work. He is a retired forest ranger, and quite handy with a chainsaw. That's Rose with our group next to him:

I took this pic of Sunshine in front of a root ball at another house we worked at to give an idea of the size and shallowness of the roots down there. In Kansas, at least, the roots go down several hundred feet, so it takes a lot more to knock a tree over. Down there, the roots are only a couple of feet deep because the water level is so high.

This tree would have been way too much for the YJ to tug around, so we cut it up where it was. The wood down south is so much more dense and heavy than here at home because of the year-long growing season. This tree probably weighed 4 or 5 tons and was nearly 100 feet tall:

 

[Sparky-Watts]

The church in Moss Point was a gathering point for refugees to pick up whatever relief supplies they needed. Here are a few shots of the dining room where the supplies were handed out:

The church was going through this much in health kits and cleanup kits every day:

This was a typical day's supply of bottled water for refugees:

Everywhere you looked amid all the damage and despair, there were numerous church groups from all across the US set up to feed, clothe, and otherwise assist the victims of Katrina:

 

[Sparky-Watts]

We did have our share of fun in the evenings back at the church, to take our minds off what we had witnessed during the day. This is Lori working on a special gift for John. John was about 6'4" tall, and quite, umm....bald. Here she is using Paul as a model while designing a wig for him made from the everpresent moss that hung from all the trees:

And this is John modeling his new found hair:

Of course, with all Methodists, the saying goes, "Where ever two or more of us are gathered in his name, there is food", so we never lacked for good stuff to eat. We were doubly blessed because two members of our group were trained chefs, one of them with over 30 years experience at some of the west coast's fanciest restaurants.

 

[Sparky-Watts]

Friday morning, Sunshine and I said our tear-filled goodbye's to the group and set off for home, leaving behind us a job undone, a job that would not be finished for years to come. We accomplished a lot while we were there, and I think that the most important thing we did was to give the people of the gulf region a sense of hope and comfort, knowing that there are other people in the country who are thinking of them, and who are willing to give of themselves to help out where ever needed.

Thank you to all of you here on Jeepz that donated to Sunshine and I so that we were able to make the trip down there. And thanks to all of you who gave of your time and money, and provided prayers in other ways to help the victims of Katrina. Believe me, the people down there truly appreciate all you have done.

 

[LadyJeepFreak]

Sparky, That is a really great travel log. I enjoyed your pictures and the stories. It is really true that one person can make a difference and you and Sunshine are two people that proved that. Thank you for being such a kind person to those in need down south.

Lady

 

[Snitty]

I want to go help...

 

[OhioMike]

i'll be heading back home for the first time since it happened...my pa says you can still see the occasional boat in a tree...

 

[Sparky-Watts]

i'll be heading back home for the first time since it happened...my pa says you can still see the occasional boat in a tree...

Where is home? It's true about the boats in trees....you can also see boats in the second story of some homes, as well as cars and trucks up that high. I had a picture of a boat hanging out of the second floor of a house, but when my camera bought the farm, the image was lost. It's strange, because even though they had been working on clean up for a month and a half by the time we got down there, it still looked like the storm had just hit the day before. There was a constant stream of trucks hauling debris out of the area, yet it didn't even seem like they'd made a dent in the debris piles.

There were also a lot of strange stories from people who had been through the storm. One elderly couple we had dinner with at the church told us a story about her daughter finding her jewelry armoir along the side of I-10 several days after the storm, with all the jewelry still in it. I-10 was 13 miles from where the woman lived. Another couple told of finding a friend's buffet in their front yard, 2 blocks north and a block east of where their friend lived, and all the china was still in it undamaged. Unbelievably, some folks sat on their balconies down close to the beach and watched the entire storm, sheltered from the wind. One man said he could see the water coming at him from the ocean on one side and the bayous on the other side at the same time, and it got up to within 2" of the balcony of his second floor before it started to recede. When the storm had passed and the water level dropped enough, he said he had to jump down to the ground because it had washed out the entire first floor except for the framework, taking the stairs with it. He's really lucky he didn't get killed!

 

[TwistedCU]

Awesome man. My hat's off to you and your wife. Seeing that woman going up her wheelchair ramp was pretty touching!

 

[mud4feet]

Great report, Sparky. God Bless you and Sunshine and all the others that have pitched in to help. Glad to see the ol' YJ was so helpful to the cause - way to represent!!!!! This world needs more people like the two of you.

 

[OhioMike]

just west of mobile alabama...aparently my highschool was so bad they decided not to reopen it again...

exit 4 on interstate 10...