we're here

Our faithful servants arrived in Covington, LA on Sunday afternoon. As you saw on the map, Covington is straight north across Lake Ponchatarain from New Orleans. To give you some idea, this means the damage in the Covington/Slidell areas were more from the storm itself, and surges out of the surrounding water, than from the ruptured levees and standing water as in New Orleans itself.

Work began in earnest on Monday morning with the Speedway Christian Church gang headed to one project, and the Geist crew working with our Northshore partners.

Jim reports:

Well, as it turns out, we're not actually working with George and Dixie {Smith, from Carmel Christian Church, who we worked with during the April '06 Beaumont trip}, but we get to see them every night. The Speedway group gets to work with them.

We got sent to the Northshore Disater Recovery group and they assigned us a project.

Our homeowner is Levette. Her mother is in her 80s with a brain tumor. Her father died the morning Katrina made landfall. Levette tried to get him to the emergency room but didn't get there in time. She came home and rode out the storm in the house with mom. Levette's out of work, her and her mom get by on a small social security check.

The house was badly damaged: rooms, walls, etc. The only saving grace is that the water was only 2 feet of storm surge and receded in a few hours. Groups before us have fixed most of the house. Dave put in some basedboards and we've got a ceiling fan, ceiling tiles, and some inside odd jobs tomorrow.

But the big kahuna job here was clearing the remains of a 12'x24' storage shed/garage. The tree that hit the house took the shed out completely. We hauled the rotted wood and contents from it most of the day to clear the concrete slab to put in 2 new smaller mini-barn style storage sheds.

Here, John and Dana are hauling stuff away early in the day.
And here, progress! John with the pile as it starts to shrink.
Sounds like they're off to a roaring start ... and see? They don't miss me at all! :-)

More to come ...