The Big Easy Has It Tough
Houses with roofs ripped off; road signs scattered on the road sides; boats carried miles inland; entire trees snapped into two like twigs. 9 months on, and you can still see traces of the destruction left by Hurricane Katrina.We've been on the road for close to 18 hours, and for the past 150 miles, we've been seeing the devestated landscape. Coming into the suburbs of New Orleans, you see trash everywhere, and entire neighbourhoods abandoned. It's reallly like a scene out of Dawn of the Dead, or 28 Days Later, where the streets are completely deserted, and the houses are barely standing.
Water marks are on almost every building that survived the storm. They show where the water level stood for weeks. Some of the water levels reached as high as 3 metres. Huge "X"s are drawn on the abandoned houses, to tell others that they've been searched after the storm. Numbers written beneath the "X"s indicate the date the house was searched, and the number of dead bodies they found inside.
Isaac, Charles and I are staying at the Celebration Church. We've come with about 40 others from The Chapel in Sandusky, Ohio. The people have been so welcoming and I truly thank God that we've come for this trip. We've barely been here a morning, but the stories we've been hearing are heart wrenching. People losing literally everything they own. Nobody to turn to. Not even the government was quick to respond.
Passed by the Superdome, where they housed thousands after the storm. Construction work is still ongoing, to patch up the damaged roof. It was unreal enough seeing all these scenes of turmoil and destruction on TV. To see it in real life is just mind blowing.
We haven't gotten down to gutting the houses yet, which is most likely what we'll be doing. It involves cleaning out the house of all the personal belongings left behind, and taking out the dry walls, which have gathered so much mould over the past 9 months. It's literally stripping down the whole house to its bare structure.
I was speaking to Carrie, who helps run the Celebration Church. If there's anything good that came out of Katrina, it's that people have been turning to God, because after the storm, the suddenly realised that they can't live forever, and having seen so much death around them. Todd, who's the security guard, and does evangelism as well told me so many instances of people who just break down in the streets after being evangelised to.
New Orleans really needs help right now.
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