French fries, french tender, and once again the French Quarter

Hey everyone, Nigel Bennett here.

Well today has yet again been a successful day down here in New Orleans. Isaiah’s house is really looking like a liveable place again which is very rewarding. We finished putting up the sheet rock at last and the rest of the finishing team mudded up the walls and sanded everything down. The other team continued cleaning up the wood mess at the old lady’s house. They accomplished clearing a wood pile the size of a small bus. Tough work and all beat at the end of the day. But since this is New Orleans, most of us went to the French quarter to have dinner and socialize again. The owner of the place where we stayed came round to say hi. He kindly took me and Scott (Micah’s Dad) for a short tour of the area. Wow, we didn’t have to drive all the way into the city to see the damage caused by Katrina. The houses around here sustained five feet of water causing absolute havoc. Houses built up along the lake and swamp edge were just washed away. We saw one of these houses just sitting in a clump on the side of the road still untouched. As you know the folks down here like their seafood and pack it all into big deep freezes. Well as you can guess when the flood hit and the houses were evacuated, this stuff began to rot and became putrid seafood. It’s apparently the most disgusting smell on earth and causes one to throw up instantaneously. Volunteers would come in to help gut the houses. Being hot and summer, someone would out of natural instinct just open the fridge to look for a bottle of water, only to throw up immediately. To solve this problem, the freezers were the first to be taken out of the houses. Gutting the house even included taking the sheet rock off the walls and removing the insulating foam. About 12 people are needed to complete gutting one house in a single days work. More than twelve people and everyone starts to bump into each other. The walls, floors and ceilings are sprayed with heavy bleach and later sprayed again with mould protector. So altogether it’s been a long road to recovery. However, even today, almost three years later, there are still houses all over the place that are condemned and have not even been touched since the flood waters receded. Truly a humbling experience as to the power of water.

It was a productive day, and tomorrow is the last day...