PART 1 of 2: BILOXI OR BUST
By Patrick D'Amico for Community Newspapers, Inc.
As I sit down to write this article, the leaves on the trees here in southern Massachusetts are turning and will soon be stripped from their branches by the elements in order to make way for new growth next Spring. I’ve just returned from eight days of hurricane Katrina relief work in Biloxi, Mississippi where I was part of a work team charged with tearing down soaked drywall, prying up waterlogged sub-floors and carpeting, and shoveling the contents of homes out of windows in order to make way for new building materials that will hopefully arrive by Spring. The metaphor of the trees is not lost on me.
Several weeks ago I received an email from my younger Brother Bruce asking for contributions to help defer the cost of gas and truck rentals for a trip he was helping to organize for his Church in Holiday, Florida. His group of 14 very able women and men from Christ Fellowship Church were to join up with a much larger group called Samaritan's Purse, already in Mississippi. Samaritan’s Purse is a full-time, worldwide disaster relief ministry headed up by Franklin Graham, son of the legendary preacher Billy Graham. I'd never heard of Samaritan's Purse but was confident that they could only be up to good things if Bruce was involved. The little ad agency in Woburn that I started three years ago with my partners, Kris and Kevin, kicked in a few dollars, as did several of our clients and vendors. But I felt an overwhelming pull – a calling almost -- to do as the Buddha taught, and stand in the center of the suffering and experience it intensely for myself. With the blessing of my wife, Lynda, I asked to join the Christ Fellowship team and they took me up on the offer. I would fly to Gulfport and meet up with the team in Biloxi on Sunday October 2 for what would become a life-changing adventure. What follows is series of journal entries I penned each night after an exhausting day's work.
Sunday, October 2, 2005
The flight from Boston to Gulfport is uneventful and I am awakened by the deploying landing gear about 40 miles north of Gulfport. Surveying the ground below from about 2,000 feet, I see little evidence that a somewhat weakened Katrina had passed directly over these fields and houses. Minutes later we pass over a large emerald green pasture of perhaps 5,000 acres. In the center of the pasture lay a huge leafless tree with an exposed tangle of roots that, from my vantage point, looks about the size of a minivan or two. Oddly, the hole from which this towering tree was ripped is nowhere in sight. It becomes clear to me that this giant of a tree was blown to this pasture from God only knows where. Despite the wall-to-wall death and destruction that I had seen 24/7 on the cable news channels, this dead and displaced tree sends a chill through me and for the first time I become anxious about what I'll find when I hit the ground in Mississippi.
Straight from the tarmac in Gulfport, I am ushered by my brother directly to my first job site in Biloxi. I have arrived at what is left of a nice upper middle class home in what is left of a nice middle class neighborhood no more than a few hundred feet from an inlet off of the Gulf of Mexico. Katrina came charging through this place mercilessly pushing a 28-foot wall of water.
Betty F. has lived here for 30 years, raised a son and a daughter, and buried a good and loving husband from this single story brick home at 465 Royalton Street. As I arrive, the team from Christ Fellowship, which has been here for several hours already, has deposited most of Betty's worldly possessions onto the curb including couches, chairs, wet mattresses, TVs, assorted appliances, clothing and linens, a Christmas tree and its trimmings, Mardi Gras beads, and lots and lots of mud left behind by the receding water. Mud that stinks so bad not even the surgical masks we are wearing dull the scent. The growing pile of Betty’s belongings nearly obscures the view of the home from the street. Take everything you own and everything you ever worked for and throw it in a single pile. You’d be surprised how large it can get. And that is what I see up and down this street. House after house after house after house. The work is just beginning here and there is so much to do inside.
My Dad and my older brother each owned ceramic tile and marble contracting businesses for many years. So I know what plumbing and electrical infrastructure look like inside walls in much the same way a chiropractor knows the bones and muscles that lay behind flesh and blood. This makes me the resident kitchen and bathroom “expert” and that lands me the job of deconstructing Betty's kitchen. The task here, as it is throughout this home, is to take the place down to the two-by-four studs. Betty has already gone through and taken what little was savable. It amounts to four banana boxes. Each of us has a room of our own and everything else must go. Floors come up, ceilings come down, walls removed, nails and screws too. I'm not sure where to start and I am sliding around perilously in a 4-inch slurry of muck, sewage, food, broken glass, and assorted kitchen utensils. I thank God for G.I. Joe's Military Surplus on Washington Street for selling me the used knee-high rubber boots I am wearing. It makes sense to start clearing the floor so I begin shoveling the horrible remains of this waterlogged kitchen out the nearest window. Snow of any variety will never again feel heavy to me. A long hour later, the floor is passable. Before tearing down the cabinetry, I climb on the counters with my brother spotting me and start pitching glassware and cookware out the window over the kitchen sink. I reach for a stack of mixing bowls from the upper-most cabinet shelves, the ones you can never reach without a stool. As I grab the bowls I pour a quart of warm, smelly seawater down the front of my t-shirt. Incredibly, everything up here is filled with salt water including a collection of decorative liquor decanters Betty has stickum'd to the top of the cabinets just below the ceiling.
Elsewhere in the house, one of our teammates, Adam, has severed a water line in the master bath and the uncontrollable spray of water rapidly starts filling the tub and shower enclosure. By some miracle, the water department is working nearby and, within the hour, manages to cut the main to the house so our work can continue. Soaked and stinking carpet and padding has been removed from the three bedrooms and family room and the walls are being torn out by the powerful duo of Marie-Noelle and Becca. Several hours later, the kitchen, like the rest of the house, is transformed into what looks like a new home under construction. Appliances and cabinets lay in the side yard. The refrigerator was duck taped shut before being moved in order to keep three weeks of accumulating maggots from spilling onto those of us wrestling it out the door. You can tell when someone accidentally opens and spills a refrigerator – even from several homes away. As they say down here, “It ain’t perty”.
The ceiling is the last structure to go. My new buddy, Dave, volunteers to climb into the stifling hot attic and begins kicking down the sheetrock and plaster. As an added bonus, blown white insulation a foot deep throughout the rafters rains down on us all. It's like snow only painfully itchy. In combination with a days worth of sweat and various lacerations and abrasions, which all of us of seem to have one or more of, the insulation is unbearable. But we soldier on and carry out mountains of the white stuff in big blue tarps, a method inspired by my Fall leaf clean ups back home. It’s four p.m. and soon it will be quitting time.
By five p.m., Betty's lovely brick home is a skeleton. Floors are swept clean and the entire interior is sprayed with bleach to kill the ubiquitous black mold. In a month or two, this house will be dry and ready for new everything. And because Samaritan's Purse did the costly demolition work for free, what little money Betty receives from her insurance company will be put toward making this house a home again. It's not hard to forget that this is a non-secular effort as this group prays at the drop of a hat; before breakfast and lunch, when one of us is injured, and now, before we say goodbye. The group joins hands in a circle with Betty completing the circuit. Jack, the team's full-time disaster missionary, leads the group in a somewhat lengthy, forward leaning prayer of gratitude, appreciation and hope. Praying in plain site feel strange to me and I take the hands of the folks on either side of me in a tentative fashion. And as I usually do when I find myself in church for whatever reason, I look straight ahead and all around while all other eyes are closed and fixed downward. A Bible, which has been signed by the entire team, is given to Betty who shares that she's never read the good book but plans to start soon. I’m not sure what to write in the book jacket. “Best of luck from Boston” is the best I can conjure. As we drive away, Betty stands in her driveway, her entire life's possessions in giant piles all around her, waving to our trucks until we round the bend out of site.
Heading to the main encampment at a mostly destroyed Methodist Church directly on the Gulf of Mexico, I get my first look at the extent of the destruction closest to the waterfront. Everything is leveled. A McDonald’s sign is twisted into a yellow pretzel. I imagine that Iraq must have looked like this in the early days of the war with as many innocents left homeless by a different kind of shock and awe. Small homes are gone. Large waterfront mansions still stand but with little visual means of support. A four-story floating casino barge sits a good quarter mile from its former slip; its outer metal walls peeled away like you'd peel the remains of a nasty sunburn. Rows of slot machines are visible here and there. Can Biloxi ever come back? Place your bets. The old Methodist church's dormitories were somehow spared and dried out in time for the Samaritan's Purse team to set up one of five such encampments in Southern Mississippi. Twenty grown men will bed down in wooden bunks here. We have generator power and an old air conditioning unit that becomes our sole luxury for eight days. I have never seen a more beautiful appliance. After a cafeteria-style meal of spaghetti and meatballs that tastes like the most fabulous meal at Al Forno, we head off for badly needed showers and rest. We brush with bottled water for reasons obvious. Even the most minor abrasions and cuts must be rinsed with alcohol, H2O2, and veterinary grade betadyne, bandaged and sealed with tape. Infections are the enemy here as evidenced by a relief worker in a nearby hospital with a horrible infection coursing through his body because he dared rinse a cut in the bacteria-laden Gulf water. The same water that has been depositing farm animals, house pets and caskets onto the beach since the storm. Before I left home, my seven-year-old daughter Amanda handed me a small electric fan that she thought I should have. I hang it over my top bunk from the ceiling tile frame using an extra belt I brought along. Another day just like this one starts at six a.m. and the gentle hum and cool breeze of Amanda’s fan sends me quickly off to a deep, deep sleep.
PART 2 of 2: Blood, Sweat & Bones
Monday, October 3, 2005
The big silver and black Samaritan’s Purse semi-tractor trailer is an 18-wheel adult male’s toy shop of power tools; 48” chain saws, Sawzalls, Bobcat tractors, generators, you name it, they have it in quadruplicate and then some. It’s 8 a.m. on day two and our white pickups have been loaded with everything we’ll need for today’s job. In a few minutes, we’ll head out for another day of seriously hard labor. So hard, in fact, that I’m having a hard time believing that we’ll be able to gut another entire house by the time this day ends. It’s hot, in the mid-eighties, sunny and clear this morning and, fortunately, there’s a breeze coming in off the Gulf. The Biloxi Sun Herald is reporting the formation of another storm called Wilma in the Caribbean. Hardly seems possible, let alone fair.
We’re heading down the boulevard that parallels the beaches and the shoreline is littered with everything from dishwashers to refrigerators to rocking chairs and the occasional dead farm animal. If it could float, it’s now beach-front property. Soon we arrive at what’s left of a tiny home on Lafayette Street. I find myself using those three words together a lot here – “what’s left of”. Jerry M. greets us in front of the wreckage that was once his home. He’s in his mid-seventies but looks to be sixty. We’ve been preceded by another team that did us the enormous favor of emptying everything Jerry owns into the street and the resulting pile rises a good 15 feet above the sidewalk. I find a framed photo of Pope Paul the Sixth in the heap and prop it up against a chain link fence for no other reason than I think it shouldn’t be plowed away with the rest of the debris. The team assembles for a quick briefing by our team leader and, yes, a quick prayer to kick things off right and proper. I grab a pair of purple anti-bacterial surgical gloves, part of a treasure trove of medical supplies our client at Tyco Healthcare in Mansfield sent here in advance for us. We wear these under heavy work gloves to keep infection from creeping into the cuts and scrapes that most of us have on our hands.
Bones in the Walls
On a good day, Jerry’s 600-square-foot tin-roofed house was not a particularly nice house, at least not by most of our standards. But it was his home. And we’ll dismantle it with the dignity that it deserves. For many years, including 1969 when Hurricane Camille tore through this poor neighborhood, this old house kept Jerry and his family safe and dry. Katrina was not so forgiving. There’s a waterline of dirt and sea grass that wraps around the tiny living room about six feet up. The house sits on a cinderblock foundation three feet above the street, which means the water level crested at a little better than nine feet here.
Dave, Adam and I immediately begin to tear up the waterlogged plywood flooring. Each sheet takes ten exhausting minutes, three long pry bars, and every bit of our strength to remove. It’s close to 90 degrees now and I have an old t-shirt of Jerry’s that I found on the pile tied around my head to keep the sweat from pooling in my glasses. On the sub-floor beneath the plywood is a layer of yellowed newspaper. I read a snippet of news about the war in Europe. A new Buick is on sale downtown for $1,900 and the stock market closed up three points at 124. It takes us until lunchtime to remove the floor. I’ve never worked this hard. Ever. And the other two guys are putting me to shame with their relentless attack on this floor. Whatever could possibly drive people to work this hard without complaint is beyond my understanding.
In the bathroom, Ed is wielding a twenty-pound sledge and has hammered out the concrete and tile walls and is taking swings at a robin’s egg blue cast iron bathtub. On his third powerful swing he fractures the tub into three pieces and we carry it to the pile. Beneath the tub is a large animal nest of some sort that no one is anxious to touch. But they do and out it goes. The wood plank walls have been torn down in most of the rooms and I sweep decades of dirt out from between the studs. There’s a small pile of white rib bones in one of the corners and I am puzzled by how the family dog could have buried them behind the walls. On another wall there’s another pile of bones -- chicken and pork ribs this time. It is suddenly and sickeningly clear to me that these are the leftovers of meals that rats have been enjoying behind these walls for sixty some odd years. My thoughts drift to my kids and my nice home on a cul de sac back in North Attleboro and how this is not even a possibility in our lives there. And I feel blessed and guilty all at the same time.
The last thing to go is the ceiling, but unlike the insulation shower we took yesterday, there’s no insulation in Jerry’s attic. Which makes me wonder how hot and cold this place got throughout the year. By day’s end, Jerry’s home looks just like Mary’s did yesterday. Only much smaller. It is skeletal and immaculate. Looking through the studs you can see the back door from the front door. I’m beat to death. We all are. And to a person, we’re cut and scraped and filthy and soaked in sweat. Jerry returns from a day of running errands and checking on friends he was still trying to locate. He steps through the front door and his eyes light up like a kid at Christmastime and the site of the old man’s face erases all our fatigue and pain. Allstate is giving him a whopping $13,000 to repair his home and that meager settlement would have easily been spent on the demolition job we just did gratis. Thanks to Samaritan’s Purse, that just might be enough money now to replace the walls and floors and maybe buy a plastic tub/shower and an appliance or two.
On the way back to the base camp, Bruce gets a call on the two-way and we head one street over and spend a brisk hour and a half clearing debris that is preventing FEMA from delivering a house trailer to a far less lucky neighbor to live in for the next two years. The house we find here is off its foundation and has a huge gash ripped in its side that gives us an unobstructed view of the bedrooms. Eventually, the wreckage will be plowed away and the family that lived here will have to make hard decisions about where they go when their time in the trailer is up.
For the next four days our team will strip three more homes and an old Missionary Baptist Church down to the studs. The houses were Samaritan’s Purse assignments. The church work was in trade for a barbecue dinner that we spotted being prepared on the sidewalk outside the church as we drove by. My brother, Bruce, wanted that pork and beans badly enough to offer up his team’s services in a barter deal. No one objected and we unloaded the trucks, took down the walls, and ripped up 600 square feet of vinyl flooring as a bonus. The sidewalk meal was exquisite.
Saturday morning, October 8th, 2005
Morning comes fast. So fast I don’t feel like I slept more than an hour or two. But it was every bit of nine. It’s going home day. And, as it has been every day of this adventure, breakfast is served in the camp cafeteria at seven sharp. I climb gingerly down from my bunk, arm and leg bandaged, and grab a bottle of water with which to brush my teeth. I take a quick shower and head across campus to join my teammates at a table for 12. Everyone’s dressed in standard-issue Samaritan’s Purse gray T’s. The group of 100 or so prays before hitting the food line. Today’s menu consists of southern style biscuits and gravy, grits, toast and juice. Most go back for seconds. Breakfast comes with a sermon at no extra charge. There are ten other church groups that make up this brigade of demolition experts. They hail from places like Blowing Rock, San Diego, and Grand Forks. They look and sound as disparate as these places are, but all are joined by their conviction that God brought them here to Biloxi, Mississippi for a purpose.
Terry Jones, the Pastor of Christ Fellowship and our team member, has been invited to preach this morning. In the spirit of making due with what little Katrina left behind, Terry pulls a tall brown covered trash container to the front of the room and places his well-worn Bible on top. From where I stand snapping pictures, I can see that the margins of the preacher’s Bible are filled with notes, reflections, revelations, interpretations and insights. He offers a few words of gratitude and encouragement to start this day and end this team’s odyssey.
After breakfast, Bruce and the team from Tampa Bay load their mini-vans and it’s time to see them off. My flight back to Logan isn’t until early this afternoon. Eight days of emotions make their way to my throat and I find myself looking a whole lot like Dorothy saying goodbye to the Scarecrow. The vans disappear from site heading for I-10 West and I am left wondering how can I go back to such a fortunate life and mostly meaningless work after a week so filled with purpose. I’ve got three hours to kill so I grab a mop, bucket and a gallon of bleach from the supply depot and head back to the empty dorm. I proceed to sanitize this room from top to bottom. A baptism in bleach. Under one of the bunks I find a one-dollar roulette chip from the Grand Casino that likely floated into this room when the Gulf of Mexico plowed through here a few weeks ago. When the next team rolls into camp tomorrow morning, this room will be a fresh, clean place to rest after the most rewarding work they’ll ever do. The floor of the room is grey linoleum with the exception of a white linoleum cross near the maroon steel door. I mop myself toward the door and pour what’s left of the bleach onto the ten tiles that make up the cross and swab it around till it is as bright and white as the day it was glued down. I throw my duffle bag over my shoulder, step outside and close the door of the only church I’ve ever really known.
This week I’ve learned a lot. How to work long after my strength is gone and how to close my eyes without feeling creepy when the praying begins. I’ve been cut, scraped and had the dumb luck of being narrowly missed by a collapsing brick fireplace wall. And I’ve learned about love and faith and their inseparability. “Let me tell you,” Jones advises as he concludes his breakfast sermon, “you’re going to tear down people’s houses. You’re going to tear out their stuff and throw it to the curb. Precious possessions and memories they worked hard for they’ll never get back. I don’t know about you, but it breaks my heart. But there’s one thing we can give these folks that will never leave them. The word of God will never pass away.”
I haven’t been to church since November of 1999 when my mom left this world, and before that, it had been a good many years if you don’t count our wedding day. But as uncomfortable as I was with the public prayer on the jobsite at Mary’s home eight long days ago, I’m really OK with it today. In fact, I think I get it. Terry’s telling all of us not to attach ourselves to things. Things are fleeting. Things of this world pass away. Biloxi is living and dying proof of that, for sure.
Pat D’Amico lives in North Attleboro with his wife, Lynda, and daughters Allison and Amanda. He can be reached at pat@psynchronous.com. Learn about the good work of Samaritan’s Purse at www.samaritanspurse.org. View more of Pat’s photos at www.psynchronous.com/katrina.html