Our Second Home

Tuesday, December 19, 2006

While the first house we worked on still had one more task to accomplish before we could consider our work complete, there was not enough work for our crew there to warrant all of us continuing for a second day. So, we were sent with another team to work on two houses next door to each other. These houses had gotten on the Operation Blessing list by the request of their respective owners.

Nechama uses the real estate facilities of Operation Blessing in Slidell,

just off Interstate 10 at exit 266 (the intersection of Schwegmann's & Gause Blvds). This is the site of what had once been a furniture store/warehouse. I’ve marked up the aerial view below with the large rectangle indicating what part of the large building is owned/used by Operation Blessing; the square is where the mess tent stands. the tiny rectangle (not to scale and not 100% accurate) beyond (above) it is for laundry (free!) and the one on the right is the shower trailer. There are other trailers around (that do not appear in the photo), used by the longer-term volunteers and staff.

Before we got started, Mark and his daughter Polly (from Nashville) paused for a photo.

Our house had not been opened since the storm. What we saw as we entered and started removing everything:

That big white thing in the front of the photo above is the refrigerator (on its back).





We did what we could to retrieve anything we found that was whole and we thought might have some sentimental value. Our instructions are to separate trash from “biologicals”, from electronics. Each of these needs to be disposed of in different ways.

Once that first task was complete we had a basic, vacant house.

The dark brown on the floor is water that began to leak from the fridge and that spilled from other sources after standing since the storm.

Once emptied (and the carpet removed), it’s time to take out the rotted dry wall. Shelly and Dave (sister and brother) are poised, ready to get started.

Debbie was just getting into the tearing out the drywall:

…when we were stopped for a lunch break. We had a variety of MREs (there are a couple of vegetarian options)

and the group from Nashville (which had been organized under the auspices of the Nashville Federation) had kosher variants that could be heated in the box.

By the end of the day we had pretty much removed all the sheet rock.

We felt filthy, and happy at our accomplishment, posing between “our” house and the junk pile.

Ora, the owner of the neighboring house (speaking here with Cindy) came by to thank us.

Here’s what our house and junk pile looked like from across the street.