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This article is reprinted from the St. Paul Pioneer Press, September 18, 2005
Called to help
BY ALEX FRIEDRICH
Pioneer Press
Twenty-one people from Woodbury Lutheran rush to the aid of Ocean Springs, Miss., determined to do their part for the storm-tossed victims.
Scrap the tour of the city, the minister insisted politely as he interrupted an orientation talk for Woodbury Lutheran Church relief workers who had just arrived here.
There's too much work to be done for too many devastated families to stand around talking: stripping storm-soaked drywall, clearing ripped trees, shoveling ocean muck from living rooms — an endless list, the Rev. Dan Ferrell said.
It was 3:30 p.m. Wednesday and the Woodbury team had just spent 27 consecutive hours on the road. Ferrell, a 38-year-old from Virginia, had told them to bring shovels, rakes, pressure washers, wheelbarrows, generators — all the equipment he had neglected to bring when he, too, came to the Gulf Coast to help those hit hard by Hurricane Katrina take early steps toward recovery.
Ferrell experienced hurricanes in Florida, he said, but Katrina overwhelmed him. "Prepare yourself for things you've never seen," he warned the Minnesotans.
The conditions did not daunt the 21 relief workers whom one resident came to call the "hard-workingest" people he had ever seen.
For three days, they hauled trash from three homes of strangers, helping them get ready for the long rebuilding that follows disaster. And they rescued treasures that had been feared lost to the storm: A cherished Bible. Handcrafted ceramics. Even a T-shirt.
Many in the Woodbury group had missionary experience. Trip leader Kevin Doyle, a 47-year-old mechanical engineer for 3M Co., helped build housing in Mexico. Others repaired orphanages in Latin America and Eastern Europe.
They brought their own "disaster pastor" — the Rev. Marlin Harris, 55, a former Air Force chaplain who still has the helmet he wore when he helped clean up after the Oklahoma City bombing. Harris has dealt with two hurricanes before Katrina, including Elena, which hit nearby Biloxi in 1985.
Some had shown a startling decisiveness when they signed up for the long trip to Ocean Springs. Financial adviser Mike Brocker, 40, made his decision at the dentist on Tuesday — the day the group left. And biotech executive Dave Voss was loading supplies for the others when he felt called to go along and rushed home to pack.
The Ocean Springs they landed in was a wreck in many neighborhoods. Its 19,000 residents live just five miles from Biloxi, an area that had taken some of the biggest blows Katrina delivered.
The storm scrambled neighborhoods, blowing appliances, cars and even sections of houses into neighboring lots. Metal shards hung from trees. An entire boat was stuck halfway in one living room. And muddy clothing was everywhere — churned into the goopy concoction of dead leaves, twisted metal, wooden planks and myriad scrap strewn in yards or pushed to the side of the road.
"This is unbelievable," Voss said as he rode through one neighborhood.
The town sweated under 90-degree heat and humidity. But all the trees — even pines — in the once lush town were brown or stripped, giving little shade and casting an unnatural wintry look on the town.
"I'm trying to put the leaves back on the trees and imagine it the way it was," said 35-year-old Woodbury volunteer Rick Gibbs.
It's a town of subsiding crisis. Sure, Rene's Quality Meats and Cajun Specialties already advertises "We have fresh beef." Yet some residents walk through their yards in a daze; police enforce a midnight-to-6 a.m. curfew; and half-demolished houses are spray-painted with warnings: "You loot, we shoot."
Civil-defense workers answer phones in City Hall, where the council chamber is a control room covered with flip-chart lists of shelters and signs showing how much of the population has power and how much debris was cleaned out on a given day. The trash is measured by the tens of thousands of cubic yards.
Just across the street is First Baptist Church, which made itself a relief hub. The Woodbury Lutheran team is one of eight relief groups to have eaten and slept at the church at one time or another since Aug. 29, when Katrina struck. Sleeping bags are strewn around the church and its offices and classrooms.
"The church is shining like the Star of David," said Ferrell after his one-week stay.
Woodbury's task: clean out the houses of three families living on the beachfront San Souci Avenue. In French, "sans souci" means "carefree" — an irony not lost on the group, which soon learned that few in the neighborhood had proper insurance.
There was Sandra Thames, a 53-year-old elementary school art teacher who lived with her husband, Bill, in a brick house near the start of the street. They fled to Fort Walton Beach, Fla., before Katrina hit.
The pair have a house in their back yard. It's their neighbor's. Same goes for the black pickup in the front yard and white sport utility vehicle in the back.
Two doors down sat 74-year-old Lillian Harwood, a dignified former Virginia tidewater matron, on a chair outside the front door. She and her husband, 75-year-old Burleigh, crawled into their attic when storm waters raged below.
A worn American flag hung from the tree. Is that a Sept. 11 thing? "Nah, it's an Aug. 29 thing," Lillian Harwood said. "Terrorists couldn't have done what the hurricane did."
Across the street was Mary Nell Pulliam, a 48-year-old teacher who moved in two weeks before the storm and was still living out of boxes — many of which ended up floating away. She evacuated to Mobile, Ala.
The house held no sentimental value, she said — just some antiques and the 110-year-old portrait of an ancestor who looks like her.
With no power for air conditioning, the houses sweltered. Strange odors clung in the heavy air, and some smeared Vicks VapoRub on their upper lips or face masks.
The sea had surged in about 3 feet high, coating surfaces with muck and splashing mud across walls.
The cleanup workers squished across soggy, already molding carpet. In the Thameses house, Voss opened bedroom doors to find seaweed and sediment caked 3 feet high. "Where do I even begin?" he asked.
When Doyle stood the Harwoods' refrigerator on end, the rancid juice of rotting meat flowed out — and he vomited at the smell.
A million orders met the volunteers. Watch where you step at all times. Watch for snakes. Wash your hands before unscrewing a water bottle. And perhaps most important: Treat every home like your home.
"You are going to be making decisions about what to throw away," Ferrell warned.
That responsibility weighed heavily on Ann Gibbs. The 35-year-old mother of two was in a teenage girl's room in the Thames' house trying to figure out whether to save a doll collection as visions of the film "Toy Story" went through her head.
"It's so hard to be efficient and say, 'This is gone and this is gone,' " Gibbs said.
She and others began gingerly picking up muck-covered objects with care, stopping often to ask the owners what they wanted.
Pulliam squealed — "I can't believe you found that! That's what I've been boo-hooing about!" — when seven of her handcrafted ceramic pirates turned up.
Brocker recalled Thames eyeing whatever he took out of her house. The artist had lost all of her artwork.
"It's OK," she assured him. "I just need 10 seconds to compose myself."
The Harwoods had the hardest time letting go, often taking back seemingly ruined items carried from their home.
When Voss was toting out a drawer of clothes, Burleigh Harwood plucked out an old U.S. Air Force T-shirt once worn by his son.
Lillian Harwood's wish was for her leather-bound black Bible, which 41-year-old volunteer Kathy Boyd found beneath a pile on a nightstand.
"It's my birthday Bible," Harwood said proudly as she caressed it. Her parents gave it to her in 1944. She paged through it for comfort as volunteers trudged past.
When the Harwoods offered to send the group thank-you cards, Voss told them, "It's not about us. It's about God."
Burleigh Harwood broke down and sobbed.
With the houses finally cleaned out, their wrecked innards piled 4 feet high in the street, Harwood said, "The main problem was solved by these people. It's a part I now don't have to break my back to do."
But the Minnesotans aren't done. This trip was the first of many the Woodbury Lutheran congregation intends to launch to Ocean Springs.
And so Lori Golden put her arm around Lillian Harwood. "We'll be back," she assured her.
Alex Friedrich can be reached at afriedrich@pioneerpress.com or 651-228-2109. Online: For ongoing coverage of the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina — from theGulf Coast to Minnesota — go to www.twincities.com and click on Interactive.