First Day on the Job

Today we started to gut houses. We all got up around 8 am, ate breakfast (pancakes!) and met downstairs for our orientation to New Orleans. We heard about the timing of the levees breaking and how some neighborhoods, like the 9th ward were completely underwater. The water damage left a ring around the houses. Also we noticed spray painting on many of the houses on the trip across the canal to the neighbor of Holy Cross where we were going to gut. The gut leader told us about the symbols: Xs mean that house has been checked by the emergency crews, and TFW stands for toxic flood waters. We arrived at the work site, a cute old french style house. First step was to empty the house of all contents. We hauled out everything from ruined china cabinets to TVs. Second step was to take down all of the walls. Than ceilings, which we didn't get to today. The toughest part of the day for me was when I found a photo album filled with all these ruined water logged pictures. We were able to save a couple here and there, mainly Polaroid, but the bulk of the collection were not salvageable. The owner of the house was there while we worked and he chatted with us and even told us about the pictures when we were drying them out. We got done, showered (we were filthy) and went to enjoy some real New Orleans cooking.