Selected bits

From the lad’s journal:

This morning I sat in the mess hall after a tour with an AmeriCorps volunteer who had just arrived at Camp Hope from an older camp that just closed down. This was her first tour of the facility. It’s an elementary school under reconstruction after the floods. When I first arrived, some outside walls were still open and there was no electricity. We’ve since received generators. Every day a new corridor or wall is built and dry-walled and new fixtures installed. The school is being rebuilt around us as we live here.

Volunteers at Camp Hope (Violet, Saint Bernard Parish) are some 300-500 strong at this time—AmeriCorps, Habitat for Humanity, Emergency Communities and other church and school groups that come down for week long stints. The numbers vary from week to week. We also have fire fighters, EMTs, FEMA personnel, security and police stationed here. We are here at the request of the St Bernard Parish government. They knew they stood a better chance of getting something accomplished with volunteers.

Because the camp’s administration is, in part, overseen by the Federal Government, the camp has taken on a look reminiscent of a Vietnam base camp. The area is surrounded by a razor-wire fence roughly ten feet high with armed guards and check points. I don’t know who they are protecting us from, but because AmeriCorps and some FEMA employees are on site, they are mandated to maintain high security. We’re out in the middle of no where and while we are supposed to welcome residents, many have been afraid to come in. The Feds aren’t friendly and armed security checkpoints aren’t welcoming. I’ve begun to lovingly refer to Camp Hope as a FEMA Park with hippies cooking in the back, which, for all intents and purposes, is true.

One of Emergency Communities main duties here at Camp Hope is the preparation and transport of food to the gym where all the food is served. We have an air-conditioned mess hall space that is hardly used even though the air-conditioning is running off the generators 24/7, but the area residents aren’t allowed in. The space is designated for AmeriCorps. Something to attest to the relative limitations EC has. So we have to haul hundreds of pounds of food morning, noon, and night to the gym, which is an un-airconditioned building separate from the school. Everyone, except the residents, grouses about having to eat in a sauna. Even the Feds.

If you want to run anything efficiently, do not involve the Feds.

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As I was sitting with the woman from AmeriCorps, talking about the new Camp Hope, we were joined by a fire fighter who was on ‘fire watch’ which meant he had to roam the halls on the lookout for fires. Conditions are spartan at Camp Hope and there are no preventive measures in place to deal with fires. Firefighters wander the corridors 24/7. Todd had been walking the halls all morning and he stopped in at the mess hall to take a break.

Todd is in his early 20s and has been a firefighter for 3 years. The three of us talked about our situation at Camp Hope and what the future might look like for the area. Then the conversation turned to Katrina.

Todd had remained in Chalmette with his brother, also a firefighter, while their family had gone north before landfall. Todd had been stationed at the fire station while his brother was stationed at the local High School. The storm hit, then the storm surge. The levees broke and the water began to rise.

A call came in to the fire station reporting that the High School had collapsed. Todd said that his stomach lurched and he knew the worst fear of his life. He knew he had to go out and find his brother despite strict orders to stay at the station. He headed into the devastation. Was it right for him to leave his post in such a dire time? He loved his brother and told me that he would never have been able to forgive himself for not trying to find his brother. It just wasn’t up for debate.

He said that if you could swim you at least had a chance. The horrifying part, though, was not knowing when the water would stop rising. First it started flowing through the streets, then rose to six feet in twenty minutes and continued to rise. It didn’t stop until it reached 11 feet.

In fact, his brother was okay. The Chalmette High School had not collapsed. It had only been damaged and the refugees there were not harmed. But Todd said that the trip there in the rising flood waters had been hard on him. He had been a swimmer in high school and was a qualified water rescue technician, so he had some advantage. But others didn’t. People that he didn’t know and some that he did know died in front of him as they were swept away and pulled under. There was nothing he could do. He said he had been in other devastating situations before and was able to keep his head, but others of his coworkers had difficulty coping with the chaos and losses. Many still weren’t handling the aftermath well. He stopped talking and stared away from us.