Sweating to the Moldies.

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Post-Katrina heartbreak seen up close and personal

04/06/06

By T. Robbins

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land Northeast Reporter - Towson,MD

T. Robbins, reporter for the Northeast Reporter and Northeast

Booster newspapers, recently teamed up with the Hands on USA

volunteer network in Biloxi, Miss., on a mission to rehab houses,

remove debris, counsel survivors and rebuild in the aftermath of

Hurricane Katrina. This is her account of her experiences.

The souvenirs from my last vacation are not the kind you'd find in

an airport gift shop.

Germ-X hand sanitizer.

A green rubber bracelet that reads " Fight Mold. "

Rubber gloves.

A copy of the " Katrina Recovery Times " published by the Department

of Homeland Security.

There is nothing that says " Wish You Were Here. "

The people of Biloxi took a double-hit from Hurricane Katrina. Storm

surges from the Mississippi Sound came at them from one side of the

peninsula, while storm surges from the Back Bay of Biloxi battered

them from another.

I spent a week thinking maybe I could make a difference.

A different 'spring break'

An e-mail I had received about a month ago invited me to join 300

students and alumni from my alma mater, St. Bonaventure University,

to spend " spring break " volunteering in the Katrina relief efforts.

It set the wheels in motion.

As a reporter for 17 years, I'm used to covering scenes of

destruction, fires, horrible accidents, homicides. Nothing prepared

me for the destruction I saw in Biloxi or nearby Bay St. Louis.

Six months after Katrina, devastation is everywhere.

So is a hopeful spirit.

" I've never been in combat, but this is what I imagine it to be

like, " a fellow volunteer, with a decades-long military career, told

me.

Flying into Biloxi, one can see the scale of the damage even before

the plane lands. The landscape is peppered with bright blue

government-provided tarps on damaged roofs. On the ground, there are

streets after streets of one concrete foundation after another, all

where houses once stood.

Sharing showers

I hooked up with Hands On USA, a relief organization that is an

offshoot of a group that formed in response to the 2004 tsunami.

Having my sleeping bag on top of a supplied air mattress kept me

from feeling like I was truly roughing it, but sharing showers with

a few hundred people was another story.

With only four showers available, there was no strategic method for

ever being less than No. 56 on the sign-up boards. I came to realize

that baby wipes and " Pocket Suds " (dissolving soap strips) are among

life's greatest inventions.

My first three days were spent as part of a " street crew, " meaning I

joined a team of volunteers to simply walk the streets and ask

people how they were coping.

" You will think you are not helping. You will think you are doing

nothing, " said Dr. Bob Titzler, a retired physician from Minneapolis

on his seventh trip to Biloxi to help and lead the street

team. " There's still a lot of pain out there and your gift to them

will be showing that someone still cares. They have to tell their

stories. It's all about being present. "

He was right.

'Nothing in our hands'

On my first day, I met Brown Jr. of Angleda Street, standing

in the sun outside his trailer from the Federal Emergency Management

Agency. The way he greeted me and a fellow volunteer, you would

think that we were bringing him everything he would ever need.

We had nothing in our hands.

It didn't matter.

Brown, 75, refused to evacuate for Katrina, feeling compelled

instead to aid an elderly neighbor who recently had a stroke. The

two of them rode out the storm in her attic as the water rose. In a

house to the right, two people drowned.

For two and a half months, Brown lived in his home without food or

running water.

" This is what they mean by total destruction, " he said, standing in

the skeleton frame of his living room.

His story brought tears to my eyes. It was the first of many that

would do so.

On the phone to my husband and my parents, it was difficult not to

cry.

'Storm stories' galore

I did feel like I was not doing much, but I never heard the

words " thank you " as much as that week in Biloxi. So many people

just said, " I'm so glad you stopped by " and offered a cool drink or

a place to sit while they told their " storm story. "

After my first day, I woke up with a burning sore throat. Swallowing

felt like broken glass was for breakfast. I kept it to myself. After

all, it's difficult to complain about a scratchy throat when you

just me someone whose home was filled with water higher than his arm

could reach.

Each day was more exhausting and more heartbreaking than the last.

Normally a night owl, I was more than glad to crawl into my sleeping

bag at the designated " lights out " time, all of 9:30 each night.

On mold patrol

One night, I phoned my husband to tell him how excited I was of my

next day's assigned chore. Removing mold from a house is tedious,

time-consuming work. It is also considered a right of passage in the

volunteer community. It's a crucial step in the rebuilding process

because, until the mold is removed, no other rebuilding work on a

particular home can begin.

" You're excited about mold? " my husband asked.

The next day, I joined my mold crew at 284 Kuhn St. Wearing a white

Tyvek suit and my face covered with a respirator mask, I was

sweating like crazy within the first five minutes. I wondered

if " mold removal " was an activity listed on one of my favorite Web

sites that determines calories burned for all kinds of activities,

and I had visions of creating a new video " Sweating to the Moldies. "

At first, I didn't know much about the woman who called this house

her home. I knew she once had the same CorningWare dishes as I have;

I saw them in a pile of debris on the front lawn.

'This is someone's house'

Inside, based on a tip from someone who had done this job the day

before, I repeated a mantra to myself with every scrub of the wired

brush.

This is someone's house. This is someone's house. This is someone's

house.

By the afternoon, the mantra changed to " this is 's house "

after I met the woman who owns the home.

Another day was spent pulling nails out of just about every inch of

a destroyed home belonging to a family, the owners of a local deli.

The house next door was now just a concrete foundation. Another

volunteer and I were sifting through some of the rubble when I came

across a blue glass bottle. My husband and I collect such objects,

all on display on a kitchen window sill.

Thinking it would make a nice addition to our collection, and a

reminder of my trip, I picked it up and placed it in the trunk of my

rental car, But as I ate lunch in the deli, a thought ate away at

me. Put it back. It did not belong to you. It came from someone's

home. How would you like someone to be rummaging through your

things?.

When we returned to the job site, I placed it upright on what would

have been the front steps.

The next day, taking a side trip to ravaged Bay St. Louis, about 45

minutes east of Biloxi, I met a man cleaning up the rubble of his

mother's home. Its roof was 35 feet up the street, along with her

bedroom set, living room furniture, refrigerator and a household

full of belongings.

The chain link fence surrounding her property was unbroken.

The young man, in his 30s, talked about the hidden impacts of the

storm, the failed relationships and deaths of a few of his mother's

elderly friends who died after the storm.

" If your relationship with someone was strained before Katrina, it's

obliterated after, " he said. " A strained relationship just cannot

survive all this. "

He predicted that divorce rates would soar in the months ahead.

Since I've been home, I've often wondered about Brown Jr., and

Sue Porter, living with her husband and four teenagers in

their " FEMA tin can " and giving a whole new meaning to the words

sibling rivalry.

" If you don't laugh, you cry, " she told me. " And sometimes you do

both at once. "

Her adult nephew arrived at his home after the storm to find a boat

and a Harley-son in his driveway.

" He didn't own either one, " she said.

What wind and water can do

" The mind does not want you to believe wind and water can do this, "

Dr. Bob said later as we drove alongside the ravaged coast.

At the end of the week, I stopped in a drug store to buy a postcard

to send to a colleague in Afghanistan. The cards showed one pretty

beach or sunset after another.

I couldn't bring myself to send such a false piece of reality.

Instead, I'll send him a picture of me and Brown Jr. or

Porter or a number of other Katrina survivors.

As for me, I'm hanging onto the map of Biloxi.

I'll need it for when I return.

E-mail T. Robbins at T. Robbins@...