Locals give the Gulf Coast a hand in Katrina’s wake

By David Early and Daniel Herd
Sun contributors
Ten months after Hurricane Katrina brought New Orleans and much of the Gulf Coast to its knees, the area is still reeling. Here are the stories from two local residents who worked with Habitat for Humanity and FEMA this spring to help put the region back together.

Boats sinking, spirits rising
The 140-foot tugboat the Linda Susan didn’t exactly look seaworthy, but it was being prepared for one final voyage. William Ladnier, his brother Greg, and his father Pat had been working for over five months to get it ready to be sunk in the Gulf of Mexico to create “fish havens” for red snapper, grouper and triggerfish. This would be the tenth such vessel (along with a half dozen army tanks) they had contracted with the Mississippi Department of Marine Resources to scuttle. Next to the Linda Susan was moored the Windward Sentry, a 192-foot cargo ship that had served as home and refuge for the entire Ladnier family during the worst hours of Hurricane Katrina.
I was in Biloxi, Mississippi for a week volunteering for Habitat for Humanity by preparing foundations for five new houses. Several other organizations including the Salvation Army and various church-affiliated groups were represented there. We slept in what was left of the Mayvar Shrimp Company warehouse, which had been under 14 feet of water after the storm. Each day I enjoyed my morning coffee on the narrow porch and looked out at a nearly totally destroyed boat storage building that still contained a few boats on its upper levels. Three days before I arrived, I was told, one of those boats dropped 32 feet and smashed to pieces on the concrete floor below. We would gather every morning for breakfast in a makeshift cafeteria built underneath the bleachers of a high school football stadium and then receive our assignments for the day. When we returned for lunch there were often a hundred volunteers being fed. Most were from the southern states, but people came from all over the United States and Canada. A group from the Air Force base and three teams of Americorps workers were there too.
The extent of the damage I observed was more than I was prepared for. Imagine a giant hand starting at Northport and smashing every structure within 1000 yards of the bay all the way to Petoskey, and you have some idea of what I saw. Recovery in a physical sense will take many years; emotional recover may take even longer. Habitat’s progress is not now limited by resources but by manpower. Still, in spite of organizational and logistic difficulties, homes are being built and families have a chance to put their lives back in order.
The best part of volunteering to do anything like this is the opportunity to meet and work with great people from all over. During my volunteer days for Habitat, I was fortunate enough to be working with Susan Wiseman from Grand Junction, Colorado who was making her third trip to the area. She had been with the Red Cross shortly after the hurricane hit, driving a regular route delivering hot meals to people who had lost everything except their spirits and sense of humanity. Susan spent three weeks feeding the stomachs and morale of dozens of families including the Ladniers, a family she introduced me to.
The Ladniers, now living in one of the infamous FEMA trailers so prevalent along the Gulf coast, had done their best to put their lives back together. Responding to Susan’s kindness, they had invited us to tour the boats, told stories, shared an amazing homemade gumbo (seasoned with sassafras) and were gracious hosts under difficult circumstances. Pat and his wife Mary gave accounts of struggle and survival.
On Sunday morning, August 28 of last year, as the winds increased and the waters rose, the family boarded the Windward Sentry and headed for safer harbor through the Back Bay of Biloxi to the Industrial Seaway Canal about 15 miles from their D’Iberville home. This was the one asset they could take with them; it was also the one structure that might keep them alive. So that’s where they stayed for 17 hours, fighting surging water and powerful winds and watching smaller boats crash into bridges, roll over and sink. Later on Monday afternoon William set out in a smaller boat across a lifeless bay to find nothing left of his home except a concrete slab strewn with trees, furniture, appliances, garbage, and fragments of the thousands of houses that had been destroyed in Katrina’s path. They had lost their home and belongings, including her books, his 35-millimeter slides from five years in the U.S. Navy, but they had their health and the two boats that would provide their livelihood for the near future. Now they would sink one.
I worked for five days in 90-degree heat digging footings for the one-level homes that would be built by other crews after my departure. I had been warned to drink plenty of water, seek out shade, and “pay attention.” One of my co-workers noted that living in an area now so devoid of anything beautiful was beginning to wear on him. I was starting to have the same feeling.
That said, the last day of my work was an especially bright one for the Ladniers. The state inspector had cleared the boat for sinking. After salvaging everything of value William and Greg had spent days scouring the hold to remove grease, oil and fuel. The dirtiest work was over, but there was still more to do. Holes would have to be made in the hull of the boat so that it would sink properly and without rolling. But a major hurdle had been cleared and a celebratory gumbo was simmering on the stove in the small trailer Pat and Mary called home.
The only dark news of the day was that the sinking, originally scheduled for an afternoon three days later, would have to be postponed because a tropical depression forming just off the Yucatan Peninsula was predicted to bring 14-foot swells to the area. What we didn’t know was that the depression would soon turn into the first named tropical storm of the season — Alberto.
— David Early
Picking up sticks
After four hours of orientation, equipment allocation and paperwork (always paperwork) I got back in my rental car and drove from Vicksburg towards the coast to Hattiesburg, where I would spend the next four months. As part of the federal response to Hurricane Katrina, I deployed to the affected area to help in the cleanup effort. While the majority of the damage was inflicted upon the Gulf Coast, Mississippi’s second largest population center, Hattiesburg, was also devastated, having received 125 m.p.h. winds and an extended period of rain, which brought thousands of trees down, destroying homes and utilities. This area, about 60 miles from the coast, lost power for more than two weeks and this during late-summer humidity and temperatures that topped 100 degrees.
The extent of orientation before I arrived consisted of a brief email and a few sheets of paper, all later found to be horribly inaccurate or misleading. They mentioned bringing lots of bug repellant, worrying about blisters, and remembering to drink enough water. I worked from an air-conditioned rental car and had $40 a day to spend on food, which made hydration easy and comfort a given. As you may start to wonder now, absent from this introduction is the knowledge of what duties I performed. I knew almost nothing and gained my only real insight by speaking with another National Park Service employee freshly returned from his own 30-day stint. His advise: “Bring lots of books and get ready to be bored.” As it turned out, I read only two books throughout the five months, during three of which I headed the second largest U.S. Corps of Engineers debris removal project in Mississippi. The first month was less than exciting.
The emergency center in Hattiesburg consisted of an abandoned office building, recently brought back into operation to hold the 300 or so Army Corps of Engineers personnel working from it and was nothing more than a few large, open rooms and a lot of computer cables. All incoming people were housed in hotels and, though mine had an awful smell and lacked sufficient light, I almost giggled at the idea of spending an entire month in a hotel — fancy when compared with the deployment briefing, informing us that housing would be tents or FEMA trailers.
The job, carried out by thousands of people after each hurricane, consisted of writing load tickets to contracted companies, providing them with the verification necessary to be paid by FEMA. It took 15 minutes to learn. For a month, ensconced in a government rented KIA (all personnel were provided with separate rental vehicles), I led a group of three dump trucks, a back hoe and two flag persons, as we trolled the streets of Mississippi for storm-related debris, usually left out by people cleaning the trees, trash and refuse strewn across their property by Katrina.
As the end of the month approached, my direct supervisor Tom, a lock operator from Minnesota, asked me if I would take another position, that of team leader for the private property debris removal project. Instead of cruising around looking for debris, residents would sign up for crews to come onto their property to remove all storm-generated debris. The team consisted of 30 people and looked to be running smoothly, so I accepted.
Three days after accepting the position, I realized that at our current rate of completion, the project would take 8.17 years. Something needed to change. The projection I gave my supervisor was that within two weeks we needed to more than triple in size and force the contractor to provide additional crews. You see, all work was being performed by contractors, sub-contractors, and subs of subs. So, though all federal responders were told to bring gloves, work shoes and safety equipment, if any of us were ever found to be lifting a log, or pushing a broom, we could be sent home immediately — fired for working.
Although employed for eight years with the federal government, this fact still confused and infuriated me. It was accepted as regular practice for a large company, the primary contractor to provide logistical control and financing, while a sub-contractor, sometimes three levels below the prime, performed the work. For this, the prime retained between 45 and 60 percent of the contract dollars. While those of us who left our gloves in the car and wrote claim tickets received a good wage, those running the equipment and picking up debris often were being paid no more than $10/hour.
Although frustrating aspects pervaded the work, I was also treated to many wonderful experiences, making the deployment more than just a job or a way to help the affected area recover from the devastation. The people of Mississippi, especially those suffering loss, are some of the most welcoming, friendly and helpful I have ever encountered. Along with this, the group of federal and local employees — brought together by the opportunity for economic gain — are some of the most dynamic, fun and positive people I have ever met. Faced with what seemed an impossible task and burdened with the shackle of federal bureaucracy, this group helped in the removal of over seven million cubic yards of debris and the cleanup of almost 6500 private properties.
Either from practical necessity or comic effect, I would stand on an eight-inch high stump to give my morning address to the room full of orange and red-shirted people, and upon leaving I accepted my certificate from this same log and wrote in a goodbye: It is an awful mess, both from the storm and from FEMA’s response and what wonderful people were brought together from it. The area will never be the same and there will be more hurricanes, but like I was told by an 84-year-old woman who had four trees come through her house, “What more can you do? You pick up the sticks and move on …”
— Daniel Herd