Oracle Online

While having conversations with Judy and Jim, I learned many things not reported by the media. When the city was underwater, the water was toxic. There were sharks, stingrays, crocodiles, and snakes swimming around. As a Minnesotan, I don’t think of these animals swimming around in a flood. There was also an oil spill that had mixed with the water. During the storm, no one could access their bank accounts because the banks, like everything else, were under water. A Category 3 hurricane is like three hydrogen bombs going off. Everything in its path was covered with gray muck. It was depressing for them to come home to a gray city which was usually full of color. It was silent when they came home. There were no birds singing and no kids playing. These are just a few first-hand facts that I had never heard before.

Coming down to New Orleans, I didn’t understand why a city was built below sea level and why it still existed. That quickly changed. One of the days we went to a St. Patty’s Day parade. It seemed like a normal parade at first. Families were lining up on the sides of the street. One thing that New Orleans is known for is gaudy bead necklaces. People in the parade were throwing beads left and right. You had to be careful not to turn your head, as you could be taken out by flying beads and vegetables. Yes, vegetables. There is an Irish tradition to throw cabbages, carrots, onions, potatoes, and the random banana and orange. When people in the parade found out about us being volunteers from St. Paul, they gave us anything and everything they had. They were so thankful that we were down there helping rebuild their city. By the end of the parade, our necks were tired from wearing so many beads, and we had enough bags of food to make a stew. New Orleans has a culture unlike any other city.

Some of us had thought we would be rebuilding houses when we got down there. Unfortunately, there were so many houses that haven’t been touched since Katrina that we gutted houses instead. By gutting, I mean tearing down walls, ceilings, floor boards, tile, bathtubs and toilets, and every single nail-pretty much everything but the studs. It took 20 people two-and-a-half days just to gut one six-room house. The second house we went to we had to remove all of the furniture and household items because it, like so many others, hadn’t been touched for 19 months. There was still food in the fridge, photo albums on the tables, and garbage in the waste baskets. We found plaques for a reverend’s service in a church, jewelry, baby toys, and nice china. It was emotionally hard to work on this house. We were throwing away someone’s life.