Wednesday, July 4, 2007
Elevation requirements
Here is one example of a house that has been built according to the new elevation requirements for those living in the flood zone. This adds considerably more to the already expensive cost of rebuilding.
Warm ocean waters fuel hurricanes, and there was plenty of warm water for Katrina to build up strength once she crossed over Florida and moved into the Gulf of Mexico. This image depicts a 3-day average of actual sea surface temperatures (SSTs) for the Caribbean Sea and the Atlantic Ocean, from August 25-27, 2005. Every area in yellow, orange, or red represents 82 degrees Fahrenheit or above. A hurricane needs SSTs at 82 degrees or warmer to strengthen.
THANK YOU TO ORGANIC VALLEY!
A big THANK YOU to Nick Levendoski and Organic Valley (http://organicvalley.coop/) for donating Wisconsin cheese to the volunteers at Hands On Gulf Coast!
IMPACT OF HURRICANE KATRINA IN MISSISSIPPI
- Many coastal towns of Mississippi and Louisiana were obliterated in a single night.
- The winds from Katrina hit the coast of Mississippi and lasted over 17 hours, spawning 11 tornadoes (51 in other states), and a 28-foot storm surge flooding 6-12 miles inland.
- Many, unable to evacuate, survived by climbing to attics or rooftops, or swimming to higher buildings and trees. Over 100 people were rescued from rooftops and trees in Mississippi.
- Afterward, over 235 people died in Mississippi, and 47 counties in Mississippi were declared disaster areas for federal assistance.
Mississippi and Louisiana
- Louisiana and Mississippi are among the poorest states and lack the necessary resources to fuel a full recovery.
- According to the 2000 U.S. census, Mississippi ranked 2nd only to District of Columbia in its poverty rate, making it the poorest state in the nation, with Louisiana ranking as the 2nd poorest.
- Mississippi also ranks 50th in the quality of its health care, while Louisiana ranks 49th. Both states also share the lowest level of educational attainment in the country.
AmeriCorps contracts
I am very pleased to say that 2 individuals who came down to help out on the Gulf Coast for the Spring Break trip I organized this past April are each signing 4.5 month AmeriCorps contracts here at Hands On Gulf Coast. Laina Breidenbach will be working in the area of construction, and Jesse Weber will be involved with youth development. They will be a great addition to our community, and will be joining us here over the next couple of weeks!
FACTS ABOUT HURRICANE KATRINA
- The rebuilding effort is expected to take at least 12 years.
- Hurricane Katrina was a Category 3 hurricane when it hit ground, and the eye passed close to the Mississippi/Louisiana border.
- Katrina pushed a 28-foot wall of water called a "storm surge." In Mississippi, the water rose for about 8 hours, and then drained. In New Orleans the same wave breached the levees and reversed the drains, but was then unable to recede, leading to the prolonged disaster period.
- At least 1,836 people lost their lives in Hurricane Katrina and in the subsequent floods, and the storm is estimated to have been responsible for $81.2 billion in damage, making it the costliest natural disaster in U.S. history.
- You can still come down and volunteer to help on the Gulf Coast...feel free to contact me for more information, or visit our website at www.handsongulfcoast.org.
Thursday, June 14, 2007
Tours, tours, tours...
I have been giving a ton of tours to groups lately, and know quite a bit about the history of Biloxi, how it has gone from a shrimping town and is heading in the direction of a "mini Vegas," etc. They announced last month that a $700 million Margaritaville Hotel and Casino will be coming to Biloxi. Jimmy Buffett, who grew up about 45 minutes from Biloxi, is partnering with Harrah's Entertainment on the project, which should be completed by 2010. Some of the most recent tours I have given have been to a Jewish Funds for Justice group from New York, a teen group from a residential weight-loss school from North Carolina, and a group of students from Dartmouth College. I have a great time doing it, and get to meet all sorts of people from all over.
It has been getting really, really hot here and is only going to get worse. My poor Wisconsin skin isn't ready for this heat. I may just melt here in Mississippi...
It has been getting really, really hot here and is only going to get worse. My poor Wisconsin skin isn't ready for this heat. I may just melt here in Mississippi...
Marmalade the cat
I have sad news for those who were down on the Spring Break trip and remember the "base cat," Marmalade. She wandered out into the road about a week ago and was hit by a car. We "retired her jersey" on the wall here and she was buried in the back of our base.
Tuesday, April 24, 2007
Coming home...
I was home about a month ago, and didn't get to see everyone I wanted to--the time went by way too fast. Sam and I should be back again towards the end of August, so hopefully I will be able to get around to seeing more people then.
Update...
Wow, I haven't posted on this thing for awhile! We have been settling down from Spring Break madness here at Hands On Gulf Coast, catching up on cleaning (the "Spin Cycle" is spotless!) and just getting back into our regular routines. We have a lot less volunteers these days, which is actually a nice break, and many of them are older groups than what we've had the past month and a half. I have been giving orientations to groups and individuals, and taking them on tours. A new AmeriCorps NCCC team arrived a few days ago and I took them around East Biloxi, to lunch, and out to the Friendship Oak yesterday (the Friendship Oak is over 500 years old and is on the University of Southern Mississippi campus). I also went to a 3-day conference in Jackson the earlier part of last week. It was put on by the Mississippi Center for Nonprofits and the conference was great, but I must say the highlight for me was taking a "real" shower and sleeping in a "real" bed. It was a luxury!
Wednesday, March 28, 2007
Meeting Mr. Earl...
Today I went out and had an amazing day working at a new house Hands On Gulf Coast is working on. It belongs to Mr. Earl, who is 62 years old and uses a walker to get around. He has lived in the house for most of his life. Like a lot of the older residents of Biloxi, he survived Hurricane Camille in 1969, so decided he could stick it out for Katrina. Here is the story he told me as we sat on his porch and talked today...
Like I said, he had lived through Camille in '69, and the water had come up to the second step of his porch then. Like I have heard a lot of Biloxi residents say, they never thought anything could be worse than Camille. The night before Katrina was to hit, the power went out in his house and he used candlelight to get around. He went to bed that night, and woke up in the middle of the night to use the bathroom. He said, "I stepped off the bed like I always do when I get up in the middle of the night to use the bathroom, but stepped knee-deep into water." He said he got up and moved around his house for a little while, and when he looked outside it was like he was on an island--there was water 360 degrees around his house. He said there wasn't anything he could do about it, so he went back to bed, but he was concerned about the water getting higher. When he got back in bed, he stuck his hand in the water off the side of his bed so he could tell if it got any higher and he would wake up. Fortunately, the water didn't get any higher. He did fall back asleep, and when he woke up again, the water was gone.
This illustrates how differently things occurred in Biloxi as compared to New Orleans. In Biloxi, the water came in and receded in a fairly short amount of time. In New Orleans, most of the damage was due to the breaking of the levees. When that water came in, it had nowhere to go, and the area was like a big bowl that held the stagnant water for weeks.
I had a great day talking to Mr. Earl and also getting some work done for him. I went there with my boyfriend Sam, who had gone through the house with Mr. Earl and made a list of all the things he wanted help with. Mr. Earl lives alone and doesn't have many people around him to help him work on his home. He has had both volunteers (other than Hands On volunteers) work on his home, and he has also hired people to do work. He says he trusts the volunteers he has had more than he trusts the hired help, and that probably 85% of the progress he sees around town is being done by volunteers. Mr. Earl had asked that a crew he had hired be very careful with an awning that had survived both Camille and Katrina. They were rough in handling it, and slightly backed into it with their truck. These are one of the things we are going to repair for him. I was walking through his house and saw a ceiling that had been painted by the hired individuals and they hadn't bothered to remove the light fixture from the ceiling--they just sprayed paint right over it, and the light from the lightbulb was barely coming through the paint. We took it down and I cleaned it with water to get all the paint off, and we put it back up. Mr. Earl has doors in his house that have been there since it was built, and I believe he installed them himself. When the crew that he had hired was working in the house, he asked if they could either cover or take down the doors before doing any painting in the room, as they were very important to him. They didn't do this, and there is paint all over the doors. Sam and I took one of them down today and I spent part of the day scrubbing the paint off the door and staining it. We put it back up at the end of the day and he was thrilled, and I said I would be back to do the same to the rest of the doors, and he was even more thrilled and so extremely grateful. Days like this confirm that this is where I need to be right now, and I couldn't be happier...
Like I said, he had lived through Camille in '69, and the water had come up to the second step of his porch then. Like I have heard a lot of Biloxi residents say, they never thought anything could be worse than Camille. The night before Katrina was to hit, the power went out in his house and he used candlelight to get around. He went to bed that night, and woke up in the middle of the night to use the bathroom. He said, "I stepped off the bed like I always do when I get up in the middle of the night to use the bathroom, but stepped knee-deep into water." He said he got up and moved around his house for a little while, and when he looked outside it was like he was on an island--there was water 360 degrees around his house. He said there wasn't anything he could do about it, so he went back to bed, but he was concerned about the water getting higher. When he got back in bed, he stuck his hand in the water off the side of his bed so he could tell if it got any higher and he would wake up. Fortunately, the water didn't get any higher. He did fall back asleep, and when he woke up again, the water was gone.
This illustrates how differently things occurred in Biloxi as compared to New Orleans. In Biloxi, the water came in and receded in a fairly short amount of time. In New Orleans, most of the damage was due to the breaking of the levees. When that water came in, it had nowhere to go, and the area was like a big bowl that held the stagnant water for weeks.
I had a great day talking to Mr. Earl and also getting some work done for him. I went there with my boyfriend Sam, who had gone through the house with Mr. Earl and made a list of all the things he wanted help with. Mr. Earl lives alone and doesn't have many people around him to help him work on his home. He has had both volunteers (other than Hands On volunteers) work on his home, and he has also hired people to do work. He says he trusts the volunteers he has had more than he trusts the hired help, and that probably 85% of the progress he sees around town is being done by volunteers. Mr. Earl had asked that a crew he had hired be very careful with an awning that had survived both Camille and Katrina. They were rough in handling it, and slightly backed into it with their truck. These are one of the things we are going to repair for him. I was walking through his house and saw a ceiling that had been painted by the hired individuals and they hadn't bothered to remove the light fixture from the ceiling--they just sprayed paint right over it, and the light from the lightbulb was barely coming through the paint. We took it down and I cleaned it with water to get all the paint off, and we put it back up. Mr. Earl has doors in his house that have been there since it was built, and I believe he installed them himself. When the crew that he had hired was working in the house, he asked if they could either cover or take down the doors before doing any painting in the room, as they were very important to him. They didn't do this, and there is paint all over the doors. Sam and I took one of them down today and I spent part of the day scrubbing the paint off the door and staining it. We put it back up at the end of the day and he was thrilled, and I said I would be back to do the same to the rest of the doors, and he was even more thrilled and so extremely grateful. Days like this confirm that this is where I need to be right now, and I couldn't be happier...
Monday, March 19, 2007
New Orleans...
I spent last Friday and Saturday in New Orleans for a Leadership Conference and was able to go on a tour of areas that were hardest hit by Katrina. It is something you have to see to believe. We got to see where the levee broke, and you can literally see how the water fanned out from the levee and wiped out house after house. Most of the houses near the levee had around 8-10 feet of water come through them. When we first got to this area in the Lower 9th Ward, someone on the bus asked if there used to be houses there, because you couldn't tell that there were until you got closer and could see the foundations. I learned that a lot of the water in these areas sat for at least 6 weeks. When they went in to pull everything out of the houses after the water receded, they had to duct tape the refrigerators shut--otherwise the trucks coming around to pick up debris wouldn't take them because they smelled so bad.
Monday, March 5, 2007
Spring Break madness
We are starting to get Spring Break groups in this week, and we will continue to get them through the first few weeks of April. Groups that are here now include Xavier University (Cincinnati), St. Cloud State (MN), University of North Carolina, Boston College, and Northeastern University (Boston). This means we have nearly 150 people here at base right now. Some of things they are working on include: mold remediation, painting, construction, gutting, building picnic tables and fire pits, tuturing children, and flyering neighborhoods. Some of these projects are ongoing, and some change based on the needs of the community. It's really fun to be around these different groups and the new energy they bring--they are so ready to jump in and help with whatever they can.
Saturday, March 3, 2007
How I got involved in disaster recovery on the Gulf Coast...
For those of you who don't already know how I ended up down here, here is my story...My boyfriend, Sam, is currently volunteering for AmeriCorps NCCC. It's a 10-month program where he travels around southeast United States with 11 other individuals helping wherever there is need--a large percentage of the work has been disaster recovery in Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama. He was working at Hands On Gulf Coast (the organization where I am now working and living) for 6 weeks in September/October 2006 in Biloxi, Mississippi. I flew down to visit him for what was supposed to be 5 days. The night before I was supposed to fly home, I made the decision to skip my flight and stay an additional week. During the time I was here in October I was given the opportunity to work with the Red Cross, Humane Society, a local children's Discovery Center, and also to work directly on a family's home helping to lay flooring, put up siding, and other various construction tasks. Being able to come face to face with a family who was severely impacted by the storm made the experience something I was never going to forget.
I came home after having learned more than I ever knew about how the Gulf Coast was impacted by Hurricane Katrina and knew that I wanted to do more to help. It's so easy to forget about things that are going on in our country when we no longer see them on the news. While most news coverage focused on the devastation in New Orleans, I learned that other areas on the Gulf were hit just as hard, if not worse, than New Orleans. I also learned that rebuilding efforts are expected to take at least 10 years. So, I decided to plan a trip to take 25-30 volunteers from Wisconsin to Biloxi to stay and volunteer at Hands On Gulf Coast. While planning that trip, an opportunity came up through AmeriCorps (domestic version of the Peace Corps) to stay and work at Hands On Gulf Coast, and I decided to go for it.
I came home after having learned more than I ever knew about how the Gulf Coast was impacted by Hurricane Katrina and knew that I wanted to do more to help. It's so easy to forget about things that are going on in our country when we no longer see them on the news. While most news coverage focused on the devastation in New Orleans, I learned that other areas on the Gulf were hit just as hard, if not worse, than New Orleans. I also learned that rebuilding efforts are expected to take at least 10 years. So, I decided to plan a trip to take 25-30 volunteers from Wisconsin to Biloxi to stay and volunteer at Hands On Gulf Coast. While planning that trip, an opportunity came up through AmeriCorps (domestic version of the Peace Corps) to stay and work at Hands On Gulf Coast, and I decided to go for it.
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