Katrina Cleanup

About 2 years ago this date I was down in Biloxi, Mississippi helping with Hurricane Katrina cleanup. The trip would change my life. Upon my return from Biloxi everything around me seemed different. I remember the drive home and I kept waiting to see a house strewn across the road or a blue tarped roof. I wrote a reflection not long after the trip to help me summarize the experience and remember the trip. I want to share that with you because I think it still has and affect on me.


The experience of going to Biloxi, Mississippi will stay with me forever. When I first heard of the opportunity to go, I immediately filled with excitement. I had never been on a trip that could potentially have such an impact on somebody other than myself. I expected to go to a place that I had heard was severely damaged, but because it was four months after the fact, I assumed that the worst would have been cleared up. The best way to describe what I expected is a habitat for humanity project, only on a larger scale.
I couldn’t have been anymore wrong. It was beyond anything that I could have conjured up, even if Id expected the worst. Pictures do this place no justice, and even if you take the worst picture imaginable, it is that times 80 miles. Unfathomable. Fortunately, my experience was shaped more by what was behind the damage and debris. The initial trauma, and even the lasting impact of the damage, pales in comparison to what I learned, and what will stay with me long after I forget what it looked like.
I had the privilege of meeting and working with some of the most fantastic people. Our team leaders, Joan, Howard, and Chuck were some of the most sincerely nice people one could ever meet. They were caring and fun, and most importantly for me, very comforting. They made the experience positive, when it could have easily been negative. Beyond our group leaders, the team was wonderful. The group was diverse in age and experience, but we all worked well together.
The people we met while down in Biloxi taught me a valuable experience about life: It is the most precious thing we have. The loss of every worldly possession means nothing in the grand scheme. Happiness can and will prevail as long as we remember that life is all we need. Two of the victims, who’s houses we worked on, were perfect examples of the triumph of the human spirit. Ms. Daisy, who’s house filled with water to a height of nearly 8 feet, lost almost everything. But her smile and thankfulness were contagious. She shared her story with whoever wanted to listen, she thanked everyone in her presence, and her smile warmed up even the coldest days – and it sure did get cold! We left her house unfinished, but she was just glad we came.
The most profound impact on me was given by a gentleman, Steve, who again lost everything. He had just moved to Biloxi two months prior from Texas. He moved to Biloxi to start his own consulting business, which he had put all that he had into. Both his house and business were destroyed in the hurricane. He had a collection of some forty thousand records, all scattered and destroyed on his lawn. He had prepared for the worst, putting sand bags around all the doors and windows, but a piece of the pier went through his front window, allowing all the water to enter, and basically fill his house. The day we went to help him clean up was the first day he had been back since the storm. I was working with him to comb through his belongings in the kitchen. In one cupboard, filled with a variety of molds, I pulled out a package, sent to him by his grandmother many years previous. It was a hand made lace table cloth she had made for him. The water and mold had all but destroyed, however I convinced him to send it to a dry cleaner. In the same cabinet I pulled out a camera bag, with what he said was about $3000 dollars worth of camera equipment – all destroyed. His exact words were: “I wish I hadn’t of found that. Sometimes I wish the storm had just taken it all so I wouldn’t have had to come back and experience this”. But later, after working along with him, we took a break, and he looked across the street at his neighbors house which had a large X spray painted on the siding, and again his words will stick with me forever: “I was lucky. Some lost everything, even lives, family members, pets. All I lost was my house and some of the things I collected along the way. It can be replaced. My neighbors life can’t be”. Those words frame this experience for me. I am lucky. I am lucky because when I arrived home, life was “normal”, and I didn’t have to see the damage day in and day out. I don’t have to live with lost family members or pets. Not even my consumer possessions. But that’s not why I feel lucky. I feel lucky because I got to meet wonderful people, and learn at such an early age that living is our most precious gift, and the rest is just icing.
I can’t really say anything to someone who is thinking about going on a similar trip. It would do it no justice. It is an experience unlike anything else and no words can explain it. All I would say is you have nothing to lose, and everything to gain by going. You may go with the lofty goals, and the ‘I can save the world’ mentality, but when you come back you will understand it isn’t you who is doing the saving. You will bear witness to the triumph of the spirit, and you will feel like the one who was saved. Someone just like Ms. Daisy will smile at you, and you will understand.