2006-02-19

Reports from the Field
From Thumper
Sunday February 19th.

Current Camp Katrina Population: 16
Weather: Cold, damp, a little foggy at 8:30am, highs today in mid 60s
Mood: stoked for a field trip into town for a Gun Show.
Immediate needs:

• Master carpenter for reclamation project,
  
• donations for food and fuel,
• more hard working volunteers!

What's new:

After pulling out all our gear from the Buddhist Temple in Biloxi...

Richard Scott surveys the parking lot, Leaving No Trace of the four months, hundreds of volunteers, thousands of donated hours and metric ftons of food/water/supplies that had passed through. When volunteers first arrived here, there were nine cars and a house in the lot.

And wrapping up repairs in time for their New Year's Tet Celebrations...

Phil Lindsday flew in from Ashland OR for the celebration--gorgeous temple, isn't it?

We've moved lock, stock, and two smoking diesels to Pearlington, MS, a small unincorporated area right on the border with Louisiana. It's a very different vibe here that in Biloxi where we lived for four months. For starters, there's no haves and have nots--when the storm surge came roaring up the Pearl river about a hundred yards back of our camp, it inundated the entire community 10-15 feet under water--little survived unscathed. The community hub is "Pearl-Mart," housed in the former grade school, where donated food, water, tools are given away. Hence their slogan "Pearl*Mart--we won't be undersold."

So how about a virtual tour? First, home. Formerly the site of the Post Office ( which now decorates the cypress trees out back ), our new digs are pretty comfortable, once you get around a few missing comforts of home, like non-generator driven electricity, food cooked on something besides propane, running water, or plumbing of any kind. It does have housing for as many as 25, a sweet, cypress-lined fire pit, solar-powered WiFi, tool sheds and work areas, a great kitchen and dining area, and out back a viewing platform and interpretive walkway through the swamp (with signs showing things like the very rare Louisiana Liquor Store Lottery Machine, generally not seen in this habitat before the storm ), and across the river Louisiana. It's a great place from which to make our daily forays out to help clean up and restore after Katrina.

Camp Katrina, as seen from the bucket of our loader. Note most of the leaves have been stripped from the trees. We got this place for 120 days for $1--not a bad lease when you can get it.

It's very rural, very quiet, and fairly traditional. Still, we've been well received, and it's easy to understand why; they have received little help here, and the Red Cross pulled out on Feb. 15th, meaning no more free meals in the community. Any help they can get putting their lives back together is most welcome. Packing 50,000lbs of heavy machinery, of course, doesn't hurt, either.

Virtually every day has some variation on this theme: after breakfast around the campfire and an 8am meeting, we divvy up work details and head out. Richard and co. will take the heavy equipment around to demolish houses for people, so the Army Corps of Engineers will remove the debris ( if your house was ruined by the storm, but isn't a threat to public safety, you're stuck with it on your lot unless you can pay up to $10,000 to remove it, or you can get someone-ie, us-to do it for free. Needless to say, Mr. Richard as he's know around, here is a very popular man ).

Eating Mr. Jim and Ms. Liz's ( everyone's so polite here ) Mobile Home, which was wrapped around an Oak in their front yard.">

Eating Mr. Jim and Ms. Liz's ( everyone's so polite here ) Mobile Home, which was wrapped around an Oak in their front yard.

Lisa, Jim, and Sparkle take a break to talk to Ms. Susie...

While Steve hauls out the last scraps of her former home.

Another day, another clean lot: Carmen, Lisa, and Jim wrap up on River View Drive ( the blue platform formerly had a house above it ).

To break up the monotony of just ripping apart ruining homes and hauling off the debris, and to leave this town with something a little more positive for our presence than just empty lots, we've been working on a very special reclamation project.

Down the road is a neighborhood called Belle Isle. There's a Frank Lloyd Wright-designed home there, a really gorgeous place with a double 15 foot cantilever, and soaring cedar beams and shingles, which is now sadly a total wreck.

We've been recycling lumber out of that house...

Richard in the yard of the Wright house, busting up downed trees

While out back Carmen Mauk hauls out salvageable lumber...

Taking it four doors down the street...where under the watchful eye of Mark Grieves, architect of the Temple on the playa...

A home is reborn on the bayou, built for 71 year old retiree Tony Vegeletta....

Who lost everything but the Harley he road out of town before the storm on.

In the midst of so much devastation, where every single house, every school, business, shop, farm, and attraction has been smashed up, taking a part of that devastation and converting it into hope is very satisfying.

That, in a nutshell, is what we're trying to do. So what do we do when not working? Stay tuned...