Posts Tagged ‘5th Anniversary of Hurricane Katrina’

I’ll Be Back

Sunday, August 29th, 2010

By Bill Goslin, Davis Vision, Ballston Lake, New York

"Volunteer New Orleans"I heard about HandsOn New Orleans from Joan and Harry Thornhill, members of our church, who volunteered in Biloxi in February 2006. Joan and Harry sent daily emails back to us describing their work and experiences. Knowing that I was a “jack of all trades” they thought I should go down and help out.

I took two weeks vacation from my job and found myself in New Orleans at the end of April. The city I found was truly devastated with blue tarps on roofs, abandoned buildings, piles of debris, hundreds of abandoned cars, flooded homes for miles and whole neighborhoods destroyed. There was much work to be done.

Photo by Ethan Bagley

Although I traveled to New Orleans by myself, I quickly made friends with the staff and other volunteers. Meeting so many folks, from all over the world, who were also there to help was very gratifying to me personally. The volunteer headquarters was simple yet functional with an air conditioned bunk room, great dinners from the church kitchen, hot showers and wireless Internet access to communicate with the folks at home.

I went on my first “house gutting” job in a middle class neighborhood of ranch homes. I was given a sledgehammer and crow bar then began to work on pulling moldy sheetrock and insulation down from ceilings. This was hard hot dirty work but when we were done the inside of the house was transformed; it reminded me of a new house under construction – bare studs waiting for new sheetrock.

I have spent many years as a volunteer fireman and asked if anyone had heard of “pike pole” a tool used by the fireman to pull down sheetrock. This tool has a long pole and would make the “gutting” work a lot easier and much quicker. No one had heard of the tool so after leaving New Orleans I found the tools and got them to New Orleans. Akron Brass Company, of Arkron Ohio, donated the first poles with just a phone call.

"Volunteer Disaster Relief New Orleans"I had the opportunity to work on restoring a Jazz Venue in New Orleans called the “mother in law lounge” named after the hit single written by Ernie Ka-Doe in 1961. Ernie past away a few years ago and his wife, Antoinette Ka-Doe, had been running the lounge until Katrina when she was pulled from the roof of the lounge by a helicopter. We arrived one morning with a truck load of building materials and began work.

It was a pleasure to get to know Antoinette and the many members of the “New Orleans Jazz family” who stopped by to thank us for our efforts. I might mention that Miss Antoinette is a great cook and while volunteering we ate authentic new Orleans treats like poboy sandwiches, red beans and rice, jambalaya and crawfish. I look forward to someday visiting the lounge, sipping a beer and listing to some New Orleans Jazz.

I enjoyed the hard work, the fellow volunteers and the HandsOn New Orleans folks who make it all happen. I urge anyone with some spare time to volunteer with HandsOn New Orleans. The experience is life changing; helping others who are in need is very rewarding.

As Arnold would say;

“I’ll be back!”

Bill Goslin lives in Ballston Lake New York, a suburb of Albany, with his wife and two sons; Jacob (9 years old) and Simon (7 years old).  He works for a company called Davis Vision where he manages their telecommunications systems.

Photographic Memories: Katrina Volunteers & Disaster Relief

Sunday, August 29th, 2010

by Chris de Veer, former Volunteer & Director of Hands On Gulf Coast (2006 – 2008)

It’s been five years since Hurricane Katrina slammed into the Gulf Coast inflicting tens of billions of dollars in damages and upending the lives of hundreds of thousands of people.

The tragedy that unfolded on national television compelled hundreds of thousands of people across the US to volunteer their time, their money, and their skills to help rebuild the Gulf Coast.

I was one of those who volunteered. Katrina had struck my family. Although my immediately family lived in Virginia, my grandma, who was 83 at the time, as well as aunts, uncles, and cousins lived in and around New Orleans.

No one was injured, but my grandma and an uncle lost their houses to flooding and muck. Going to help with the recovery felt less like volunteering and more like doing what needed to be done.

I landed in Biloxi, Mississippi in mid-January 2006; my initial three-week volunteer trip turned into a two-and-a-half year experience.

The impressions and the scope of my early days volunteering still resonate starkly.

When I first arrived on a plane into Gulfport, I was picked up at the airport and we  headed back to what was affectionately called ‘Base’, or the volunteer warehouse as I also liked to think of it.

I couldn’t help but notice all the blue-tarped roofs.

They were everywhere and the blue stood in stark contrast to the brown-ish drab of winter.

Despite coming in by plane, I had no idea how far the damage stretched or how thorough some neighborhoods had been decimated.

"disaster relief"The first neighborhood I visited was East Biloxi, home to many Vietnamese and African Americans.

The job the volunteer team needed to accomplish was to clean up the site of a former building.

I’m not even sure what was there, but from the debris it appeared to be some sort of a shop and residence.

There was little left, but the toilet had not been damaged. It sat in the open.

As we collected garbage into piles, we found items that someone might want to salvage – nail polish, statues, and a small photo album.

I don’t remember the content of the photo album, but I do remember those photos making the horror of the loss very real and very present.

We have photos to remind us of good times, to remind us of loved ones. And here those special memory triggers were, lying in a pile of garbage that would wind up in a land fill. The photos put faces to the ethereal family that had lived or worked here.

"volunteer"Two years before Katrina, I visited my Grandma, pulled out her photo albums, scanned in every photo, made a database, and asked her to identify everyone in every photo, estimate when the photo was taken, and describe what was going on.

Most photos had a story or triggered a memory that led to a smile.

Who knew that in two years (from August 2003 to August 2005), these scanned photos would be one of the few records of my grandma’s 59 years in her Gulf Coast home?

Who knew that a lifeless husk of a house would greet me the next time I visited.

Who knew I would lose the home where I had lived during first grade, the home where my Dad grew up, the home where my grandmother lived ever since she emigrated from Scotland to marry my granddad after World War II.

Even though my family had cleaned up a bit and tried to salvage some items from the Katrina muck, the house was still a wreck.

My grandma showed me her neighborhood.

Few people were around.

She took me to St Raphael’s, where I went to first grade, and I saw the empty halls that still bore the high-water mark of stagnant Katrina water.

She then took me to Ferrara’s, her grocery store, where I remember having the most delicious French bread.

No one had even cleaned out the meat refrigerators or touched the shelves.

The stench of rot was overpowering.

All across her neighborhood, an eerie quiet had settled.

We didn’t even need to look for traffic when we made our turns. We had the roads to ourselves.

A few weeks later, a group of volunteers went to my grandma’s to gut the place and get it ready for rebuilding.

Although it was gutted in a day, it took another two years to get any money from the Road Home Fund for rebuilding.

The Road Home was Louisiana’s program to disburse federal rebuilding funds to qualified homeowners.

In 2008 when she received her money, my grandma found another house near an uncle in Covington.

The house on Peoples Avenue in Gentilly would sit another two years before my youngest uncle would have the opportunity to begin to rebuild.

I know my grandmother was lucky compared to many other victims of Katrina.

My family was able to provide a safety net for my grandma and helped her into a new house within months of the storm’s passing.

Others on the Gulf Coast were not so lucky.

At Hands On Gulf Coast, we made a point of finding families that other organizations could not help, particularly when it came to rebuilding homes.

We sent volunteers to tutor kids in schools, to clean up parks, to work with the Boys and Girls Club, to even micro-chip pets.

There wasn’t a job our volunteers wouldn’t do.

From January 2006 through May 2008, I saw volunteers and the community slowly and steadily reweave the tapestry of Gulf Coast life.

Schools, parks, homes, businesses, restaurants, and stores all showed signs coming back to life.

I am proud of the thousands who volunteered with us.

I’m proud of the volunteers who joined AmeriCorps or became staff members at Hands On or other community nonprofits.

I hope a disaster like Katrina never happens in the region again, but I know that should it, hundreds of thousands more volunteers will come down to help with the recovery.

What Katrina Relief Gave Back

Saturday, August 28th, 2010

"Volunteer Disaster Relief"by Kellie Bentz, Director of Development, Bayou District Foundation;  Former Executive Director, HandsOn New Orleans

I was having dinner tonight with friends and joking about how I am still here in New Orleans almost five years after my initial visit following the storm.

I originally signed a six week contract to start a “disaster response project” in New Orleans and I find myself still living in New Orleans here.

It is true…this place sticks to you.

I remember the early days of starting this disaster response project, HandsOn New Orleans, in the wake of Katrina with my buddy and colleague, Greg.

"Volunteer Disaster Relief"I don’t think either of us truly knew what we were in for…and I think back and cannot believe that there were people from our national office that believed we had the capacity and ability to accomplish what we accomplished.

After six weeks, Greg had to go back to Atlanta and I looked around and there was no one else to lead the charge…so while I thought at the time my six weeks might turn into three months those six weeks turned in to three and a half years with HandsOn New Orleans.

I look back at that time and could tell you stories that only those that were there can actually believe.

I never would have imagined I would have worked with a team to build 100 bunk beds, and build out a facility that would house thousands of individuals from around the world ready, willing and wanting to “serve.”

I feel truly blessed to have had moments where I would be standing among the hundreds of volunteers and feeling chills, feeling grounded, feeling connected.

What I realized after meeting so many people who came to “Serve” was that most people were looking for a way to “connect” with other human beings in a way that was meaningful.

There are so many stories of individuals that felt their lives had truly changed after spending one week in New Orleans, one week in the bunk house, one week serving with their fellow man/woman.

Some of the most meaningful relationships in my life today came from this experience.

It is true when people say that usually the one serving gets more out of the experience than the one being served.

The entire city of New Orleans is a testament to that.

"Volunteer Disaster Relief"So many people have come from around the world and either come back multiple times or have decided to make New Orleans their home.

So much of my experience in New Orleans has been shaped by the people who have walked into my life or who I have been blessed to have shared moments with…one of those very special people who I will always remember is Ms. Antoinette K-doe. HandsOn volunteers helped rebuild her lounge.

She was a force….she worked alongside the volunteers everyday and at the end held an incredible party.

She was such an inspiration in my life and the lives of so many Handson volunteers.

Her funeral made me finally realize why there is a bumper sticker that says “New Orleans puts the FUN in Funeral.”

Her passing was a celebration of her life not a mourning of her death.

Antoinette is just one of the many characters so many of us have been blessed to share moments of New Orleans with.

Now, five years later, New Orleans has become a laboratory for what is possible…on the education front, on the housing front, in social innovation and on the human connection front.

Heck, I even came to appreciate what football can do to a city’s spirit!

I could not have asked for a more rewarding and formative experience.

Related Content:

An interview with Kertrina Watson Lewis

Serendipity: The Way Katrina Brought People Together

Friday, August 27th, 2010

by Amanda J. Smith, Rhino Entertainment Company

"Volunteer Disaster Relief"Volunteering with HandsOn New Orleans (HONO) these last few years has been a profound and humbling experience for me.

It has literally changed my view of the world, my place in it and how I relate to others. One might surmise that it’s the simple act of volunteering that did it, or the magnitude of the Katrina tragedy, but it’s more than that.

As much as we all strive to “be the change” we seek in the world, it’s hard for volunteers to put that into practice without some kind of infrastructure or support.

As new volunteers, we need good leaders, otherwise our efforts get squandered, misdirected or wasted in bureaucratic red tape. I’ve had that experience before, of spinning my wheels, and ultimately gave up in frustration.

What a waste!

In my life at least, HONO has become the catalyst that makes my volunteer efforts & energies actually productive and useful to others.

Amazingly, they have found ways to harness a world of diverse volunteers, empower us, and direct our best energies towards  tangible service. That’s one of the many reasons why HONO is so incredibly unique and why I, like so many others, find the experience so rewarding that we keep returning to volunteer with them again and again and again.

"Volunteer Disaster Relief"“Gutting is fun!” Actually, we all know that it is a heartbreaking job, tempered only by the cathartic relief of exhausting physical labor, and the knowledge that we are actually helping someone clear a space for their future, and dreams for a new beginning.

That’s why a big team of LA-based Rhino Records employees signed up for a project called “Miss Patricia’s Gut” on the very first day we arrived to volunteer at HONO in 2006.

None of us knew anything about the project, or Miss Patricia, we just went where HONO directed us.

As we dug into the work, our HONO project leader, shared what he knew about the project, that the house had belonged to the late Professor Longhair, a legendary New Orleans R&B/jazz pianist, and had been passed down to his daughter, Miss Patricia Byrd, who was living there with her son at the time Katrina hit.

"Disaster Relief Volunteer"

Photo by Lindsay Shannon

Being obsessive music geeks, we knew exactly who Professor Longhair was!

Our company had actually released records & CDs by the legendary musician.

His legacy was already intertwined with our own lives through both music and the business of selling music.

Being sent to work on his family home was a random assignment, but we felt an instant personal connection through the shared love of music.

Someone with a BlackBerry sent an email to our co-workers back in LA, and within hours, the whole Rhino company felt connected to the project and Miss Patricia as well.

That afternoon, Miss Patricia & her young son stopped by the house to meet us in person.

Someone had told her we were from Rhino – she had received royalty checks from our company over the years and was touched by the synchronicity of our volunteer involvement.

She told us stories about her father, growing up in this home with him, and that “he could make a piano walk.”

She shared the harrowing stories of her own experiences during the storm and evacuation to the Convention Center.

In the process of gutting her house, we had carefully salvaged several Professor Longhair posters, which Miss Patricia graciously gave to us to keep and display in Rhino’s corporate offices when we left.

It’s hard to explain the richness of these interactions in words, and how bearing witness to someone else’s tragedy can feel like an honor, but it does.

It’s our shared humanity and our connection to each other at this most basic level that allows us to really open up & be there for each other.

It’s why HONO works so well, and why we all keep coming back.

Hurricane Katrina: Volunteer Reflections on Disaster Relief & Heroism

Friday, August 27th, 2010

"Volunteer"by Erika Putinsky

It is difficult to believe we are rapidly approaching the fifth anniversary of Hurricane Katrina.

As we relive the stories of the hurricane through media retrospectives that are sure to come this week, I am hopeful that we also remember the lessons learned while rebuilding the infrastructure, unmasking issues of disparity that have existed for hundreds of years, and supporting survivors as they create their new normal on the Gulf Coast.

This is our chance to truly, respectfully, and actively remember the loss, triumph, and continued need of the people of the Gulf Coast region.

"volunteer disaster relief katrina"During my efforts with HandsOn Network on the Gulf Coast after Hurricane Katrina, I had the opportunity to live and work in a place where our nation truly came together as a unified community.

While I was in the disaster zone after Hurricane Katrina I was unsettled and amazed every minute of the day.

At no moment was it possible to escape bizarre sites like a delicate vase balanced atop a house that had been reduced to kindling, juxtaposed against the most beautiful sunset I had ever seen.

These unavoidable ironies hinted that Hurricane Katrina would continue to challenge us with unbelievable sadness and pure beauty for many years to come.

Once the images of the despair and the stories of the survivors reached our world, people began to act.

It seems one of the most profound parts of the recovery was that we all got out from behind our veil of comfort and did what we could to help.

During that time, we were reminded the power of putting thoughts to task.

In Mississippi I met a 90 year old woman that drove 15 hours to volunteer because the hurricane gave her a reason to “still be on earth”.

She said she was a “real good cook” and explained nothing would help the survivors and volunteers feel better than a hot meal.

I saw residents that had lost everything riding dilapidated bicycles through debris filled streets while singing and wearing superhero costumes. They said they just wanted to create some happiness in the midst of the destruction.

"Disaster Relief Volunteer"After the hurricane so many people remembered the power in showing up, being willing to help with a hammer to rebuild a home, or offer a hug to rebuild a life.

We are a world of heroes- we show up in times of great need and have the opportunity to live that heroism through continued action.

Now it is time to dust off our superhero capes, folks.

Let the fifth anniversary of Hurricane Katrina be a catalyst to remind the world to reflect on what can be with their minds, act on what should be with their hands, and continue to craft what will be with their efforts.

There are issues in every nation across the globe that we can solve with our ingenuity.

The Gulf Coast region still needs our help.

Perhaps, keep it local and volunteer at a nonprofit in your city.

You might even walk across the street and introduce yourself to a neighbor.

Show up, put your good thoughts to task and unleash your inner superhero!

Change Notes: Change Notes: Reflections on Hurricane Katrina and Our Continued Commitment to the Gulf

Thursday, August 26th, 2010

"Volunteer"

Friends,

On August 29th, five years will have passed since Hurricanes Katrina and Rita devastated the Gulf coast. I so clearly remember the early days of September 2005. HandsOn made an immediate and serious commitment to address the devastation and support Gulf relief and recovery efforts through targeted volunteer action. This decision required us to reinvent the unique “HandsOn” volunteer service model in an emergency context on short order.

Immediately following the storm, HandsOn Network mobilized thousands of volunteers to help address the needs of large influxes of displaced Gulf coast residents in cities nationwide. Hands On volunteers assisted evacuees at the Houston Astrodome, as well as facilities in Atlanta, Birmingham and other cities. They helped federal offices and first responders, staffed shelters, developed client services, and repaired homes.

"Volunteer Disaster Relief"In the ensuing months, HandsOn Network also launched HandsOn Gulf Coast and HandsOn New Orleans to serve the growing need created by the crisis. In 2005-2006 alone, our Gulf Coast action centers mobilized 6,100 volunteers, organized more than 76,000 unique volunteer opportunities, and generated over 700,000 hours of volunteer service. These efforts provided an estimated $13 million in economic benefits for Gulf Coast residents whose lives were devastated by the hurricanes.

Over the last five years, HandsOn Network has become deeply connected to the citizens of the Gulf region and to long-term disaster recovery work. Just today, The Huffington Post named HandsOn one of nine organizations that never left New Orleans. Now, once again, the Gulf bears the brunt of one of the nation’s worst environmental disasters. New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu and I met recently in New York to strategize about ways the power of volunteerism can help the region continue to recover in the wake of the oil spill.

In June 2011, we will hold the National Conference on Volunteering and Service in New Orleans. We selected New Orleans both to assist with the city’s economic recovery and also to create a year-long, focused commitment to meet the ongoing needs of Gulf Coast residents.

"usher volunteer disaster relief"Currently, 13 HandsOn Action Centers serve the oil spill-impacted states of Alabama, Mississippi, Florida and Louisiana. Looking ahead, HandsOn Network will partner with these local affiliates to recruit and train 10,000 volunteer leaders and mobilize 50,000 volunteers to devote an expected 1 million hours to support the region’s environmental and economic recovery. In addition, HandsOn will conduct a series of on-the-ground and virtual “boot camps” to train volunteer leaders to manage others and develop projects to meet community-specific needs, such as creating job re-training and job search clinics; restoring parks and open spaces; and assisting small businesses in operations, marketing and finance to recoup losses or improve business sustainability. To sign up and Get HandsOn for the boot camps, please visit www.handsonnetwork.org/nola2011.

We believe that engaged citizens are the cornerstone of a vibrant democracy and that effective volunteer action is a path to broader and deeper civic involvement. We believe that citizen action is vital to the ongoing recovery efforts in the Gulf region.

I hope you will join me in rededicating yourselves to supporting Gulf Coast residents and families in the coming year.

In Service,

Michelle Nunn
CEO, Points of Light Institute and Co-Founder, HandsOn Network