Hard Work In the Big Easy

Photos
Giving the Gift of Good Will
"Voluntourism" brings together people who use their personal time or vacation time to help gut and rebuild homes flooded and devasted by Hurricane Katrina. They also work to feed and support the residents who are working to get their lives back to normal.

After breakfast each day, teams of four to eight workers were assigned to specific tasks -- mainly gutting houses and cleaning schools. Though the homes we worked on were structurally sound, most were biohazard zones, containing significant amounts of asbestos, lead and arsenic. After stewing in the filthy Katrina floodwaters, all the houses had severe infestations of black mold, a toxic fungus that can attack human lungs.

That's why we were suited up in hazmat gear each day, with double respirators, two layers of gloves, goggles and steel-shank boots. After the safety briefing (a long list of hazards we'd be exposed to), I began to question whether a rank amateur like me should have been doing this. But I swallowed my misgivings, and our team traveled by van and rental car to our site.

In our van that first day were hammers, crowbars, sledges, wire cutters, shovels and brooms. Our goal was to remove everything from our assigned house: furniture, personal effects, appliances, carpets, drywall, insulation and ceilings, leaving nothing but bare studs. These would be bleached (an effort called bioremediation) to kill mold. At that point, theoretically, it would be safe to rebuild.

The house, a one-story building with a generous front porch, actually looked good from the outside, with a new roof, a recent paint job and double-paned windows. But a spray-painted "X" near the front door meant it was uninhabitable.

Inside, debris was everywhere. Sprinkled throughout were reminders of the family that called this place home. A few surviving photos, of a prom couple and a smiling high school graduate. A football trophy. A top-salesman award. In a bedroom closet, neatly stacked clothes had congealed into a muddy, unbelievably heavy lump. Next to them was a prized pair of Nikes in a plastic box, now floating in months-old floodwater.

The refrigerator proved the hardest item to remove: It cracked open when we tilted it, emitting a green ooze, and the stench of food rot so overpowering that one worker vomited into her respirator. Moving the washing machine, full of water, was equally tricky. One of us held the outflow hose, standing clear of any toxic spillage, while the other two pushed and pulled to shimmy the machine to the porch. There we unceremoniously shoved it over to the front yard. We took off our respirators, gulped in some air, exchanged high-fives and went back in for more.

By mid-afternoon, we had removed everything that literally wasn't nailed down, and moved on to attack the drywall and ceilings. We piled all the home's contents -- furniture, debris, insulation, clothes and linens -- at the curb, forming the now-familiar New Orleans spectacle of mountains of mold-infested debris lining the streets, gutted homes forlorn in the background. By day's end, when the seven of us jettisoned our hazmat suits, our clothes were soaked with sweat.

Our ragtag group of volunteers had managed to gut a house in a day. It would be be bioremediated in another few days, offering a glimmer of hope to a family that didn't have anywhere else to turn for help.

And for me, that was the best part of this trip. Groups like these have sprouted up miraculously in the distinctly unwelcoming post-Katrina environment. They're held together by a common bond -- a desire to help those in need -- and the energy the volunteers create is wonderfully infectious.

The sheer volume of devastated neighborhoods, the lack of funds and the gridlocked local government, combined with a less-than-effective federal response, may yet decide New Orleans's fate. But nibbling around the edges of the problem, volunteer groups provide relief, respect and small signs of progress to the locals. And for residents who've had to adapt to an existence of loss and frustration, the hope these groups offer could be enough to keep them going -- till something better comes along.

Eric Patel is a writer living in Vancouver, B.C.