Clean-up Crew

What strikes them first is that New Orleans looks like this, like a war zone. There are still boats and cars abandoned in the middle of the street. Rooftops are littered with odd items: a child’s wagon, a freezer. Piles of trash smolder in the sun.

By Jennifer Schwarz

What they notice next is the silence — there are few cars and even fewer people in what was not long ago a bustling middle-class American neighborhood. These are the sights and sounds that greet Marquette students who are spending spring break doing what they can to clean up the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. They thought they were prepared to face the worst, having seen the devastation on television, but they are shocked to see the extent of the disaster.

Marquette junior Tim Kummer can’t believe that there still is so much work to do. “The hurricane hit months ago and you would never know that by looking at this neighborhood,” he says. “If you drove down here, you would think it just happened.”

Driving along a street in St. Bernard Parish where 22 students are volunteering their service, there are signs of life in front of a few houses. Ironically, it’s the piles of soggy, moldy debris out front that indicate a family has returned.

These homes were submerged in water for days (27,000 homes in this parish alone were devastated by the hurricane). To be inhabitable again, everything must go. The furniture, appliances, electronics, personal items and mementos must be dumped. Carpets have to be pulled up and the walls, including the nails, have to be ripped from the studs. Once it’s all gone, the framework will be sprayed with bleach to kill any mold. Only then will the families be free to move back in to rebuild their homes and their lives.

The students drove to Louisiana in a caravan of minivans. They are staying in a FEMA tent with 1,000 other volunteers. It’s a taste of what living was like for so many after the hurricane hit. Their meals are provided for them, mess hall-style dining in the tent for breakfast and dinner and sack lunches on the job site at noon each day.

Gutting a person’s dank, moldy home is not a traditional spring break vacation, but junior Courtney Sullivan can’t imagine spending the week any other way.

“It’s very hard to sit at home and do nothing for a week when you know you could be doing something beneficial,” she says.

It’s a good deed done with some risk. The mold covering everything is toxic, and ripping a house apart is dirty, dusty work. The students wear ventilators to protect their lungs. They put on heavy leather gloves and steel-toed boots and goggles to protect their eyes. They wrap up their day by reflecting on what they’ve seen and done, and how they feel about it.

Today, the students are working on a house owned by Ruth and Moise Dumas, a retired couple who have come to take a first look inside since the hurricane. Just about everything is ruined. This three-bedroom home was submerged in water that rose halfway up the roof line.

Kummer remembers the Dumases’ initial reaction: “They just kept walking through saying ‘Oh my goodness, oh my goodness,’ and you just have no idea what to say, but you feel like you know them after something like this.”

Ruth is happy to find a few vases undamaged. Moise wants to save the letter he got when he retired from the railroad. It has some water damage, but he can’t leave it behind.

The Dumases liken their situation to the day they were married. They had nothing then, and they have nearly nothing now. Insurance money helped them buy a new home outside this neighborhood, and they’ve managed to get some clothes and furniture and a few household items.

Senior Sara Kandler won’t forget this experience: “I looked at every destroyed house and wanted to meet the people behind it. Katrina was disastrous, but the aftermath is personal. I feel so fortunate to be able to help these people.”

The trip to New Orleans was organized through the Marquette Action Program, a University Ministry initiative that has planned spring break service trips for students for nearly 30 years. More than 200 Marquette students fanned out to work in 14 cities across the country this year, including cities all along the Gulf Coast affected by the hurricane. According to Rev. Frank Majka, S.J., associate director of University Ministry, the MAP trips expose students to a variety of human experiences and a range of human suffering.

“These trips help them come to grips with the fact that there is a lot of human suffering in the world, and there are things that people can do to ease that suffering,” he says