30 April 2007

Hurrican Katrina ~ Sept/Oct/Nov 05


(damage in New Orleans)



(damage in New Orleans)


In September, October and part of November I was in Gretna/New Orleans, Louisiana area with Friend Ships for Hurricane Katrina response. I was asked to be Chief Steward of the two ships we sailed over, Hope and MerSea. It was a great growing experience but I wouldn't want to do it again. While in Gretna we (as-in the other people besides myself) went door to door to every house in the town and wrote down the peoples needs and then went back the next day and gave them exactly what they asked for. We had a distribution point in New Orleans, but most of the town was still evacuated. I can't even discribe the devistation.

Also, anyone who needed their roofs temporarily patched would call the mayor and then we would get the list and cover their roof for them with vynal. I spend most of my days working on the MerSea, we had over 800 volunteers come through those three months so I had my hands full. If we had a day where there wasn't anyone arriving to help, Murray would let me out to help Debi and the roofing team tarp roofs.

(pretenting like I am hammering for the picture)


After Katrina, hurricane Rita hit Lake Charles. The Friend Ships crew in Lake Charles evacuated to Gretna with a few staying behind to watch over things at Port Mercy. There wasn't a whole lot of damage but we lost the roof to the helicopter hanger and then a couple of our buildings needed repair. There was a construction team from Washington that came down to help for about a month after the hurricanes, they were such a blessing. Construction really isn't one of my favorites, so I really wasn't looking forward to returning to Lake Charles from Gretna knowing everything that was going to need to be rebuilt. They had most of it finished by the time we returned.


(The Full House ~ Daniel, Debi, Danette, Janna and Jordan)

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