Bay St. Louis, Mississippi

[BigV]

A couple of updates.

First, there have been several good stories on NPR coming from BSL. Here is a quick list. Listen at your leisure.

Second, I got a note from a stranger who lives in the area who saw this thread and wanted to thank me for my concern and my help. Wow. That was a nice surprise. It was a nice letter and also included some tips on what to expect and I found that very helpful. The whole letter was very encouraging. I may or may not meet this person in BSL, but I will be thinking of them. Thank you very much.

Next, we had our planning meeting last weekend. I got to meet the other five members of my team. There are three men and three women. Two younger, two my age, two older, one of each sex. What was the name of Noah's dinghy? I am the treasurer and one of two designated drivers. We fly Saturday morning Seattle to Houston, Houston to Jackson. We're expecting a van in Jackson. We've been instructed to top off the tank in Hattiesburg, even if we're not low. The whole idea is to place the minimum load on the local environment. It's not exactly Leave No Trace camping, but I will be very conscious of it. We'll be buying our own groceries before we get to town, and any supplies we may need.

I have been told that there's a Wal-Mart and a Home Depot within about 30 miles. That will come in handy as we have decided not to pack any tools. The only gear I'll be taking is my own personal safety gear, hat, gloves, goggles, masks, respirator, boots, etc. Anything else toolwise I'll get on site, or in Gulfport, 30 miles east.

Speaking of which, I want to take a minute and acknowledge my employers. They have been uniformly generous and supportive of the whole project from day one. In fact, when this was all happening, they announced they'd match any employee contributions. Nice.

When I asked for the time off for this project, I intended to take a week of my vacation time to do so. It's my time, I figured, I'll just have a coastal "vacation". My boss says "Oh no. We'll cover your time." Nice. Unexpected and nice. And tools? Here's the company credit card. Use your judgement. Bring receipts. Wow. My administrative costs are zero, so you can bet his help will be placed directly on the hurt. Class. It's this kind of personal generosity that inspires my loyalty. Thank you, all of you, at work. Those who will be picking up my slack, those who will be paying the bills, and to those of you who will be patiently stockpiling your problems to ambush me with upon my return. Just kidding. I am indebted to you all.

We will probably be spending a lot of time mucking out houses. For those structures still standing, the water damage from the storm surge ruined the remaining contents of their spared homes. I heard talk of drywall hiding sopping insulation. It's all got to come out. Once it's down, and dragged out of the house and to the curb, FEMA will take it away. We've also been told that some lumberjack duty may await us. Boss said I'm clear to get a couple of chainsaws if I see fit. I respect a chainsaw. For those jobs where it's the right tool, nothing else will do. Well, nothing you can buy at Home Depot. Ammo Depot, maybe, but that's not my bag.

I had my doctor followup today, set two of three in my hepatitis a/b series. My arm's sore.

I'm using this thread as my main journal at this time, but I will be taking a camera and posting the pics at my blog. I'm sure I'll get a couple here too. I will be taking pencil and notepad for my non electronic journalling onsite.

I'm feeling kind of scattered now. I'm gonna go home and finish packing. See you all tomorrow.

[plthijinx]

kewl dude, keep us posted and be sure and wave when you pass me by i'll be in the air and on station over beaumont/port author.
kudos to your boss as well for everything he's doing for you, your group and the people your going to help out!

[Elspode]

Good luck and way to go, BigV! It is people like you and your employer that make the real differences in this world.

[BigV]

Thanks for the bon voyages!

I'm really nervous now. I have to finish packing, get some rest and get to the airport on time. I'm accustomed to this pre-test pre-event stress. Tonight will be the peak, or tomorrow eeeeeaaaaarly (at airport at 4am local *yawn* time) if I'm not too zonked. Once on the plane, all will be well. "out of my hands" so to speak. But tonight it's Tums for dinner. yeeesh.

[zippyt]

"Oh BigV's a lumberjack and that's ok ,
he sleeps all nite and he works all day ,,,,,,,,,"

Good luck down south , don't work your self to death , we need you around here !!!

[wolf]

Good luck. I hope that you have valuable and interesting experiences!

I'm still waiting to hear on my latest "potential deployment request."

[BigV]

Packed. Gear packed and packed with nervous energy. I should try to get .....2 hours of sleep before waking for trip to airport.

I'm taking my cellphone, and I'll try to post with it if I find the time and energy. I understand there's a 9pm curfew. That's early for me unless I've worked hard, then I'll sleep. But I've been known to trade sleep for reading before. See you all later.

[BigV]

shhhh....

on the ground now in BSL. Literally. Bunking w/other two men on team. lights out now. am posting in darkness from ppc. safe trip. arrived in darkness. dim signs of devastation: crushed homes, overturned cars. every intersection has 25 or so signs for roofing or mold removal or painting or siding or hauling, etc. stuck in the ground where you have to read them while you're waiting for the light to change.

I promise to take (and post, I hope)my favorite pic so far.

manana. :sleep:

[BigV]

I have returned from a week in southern Mississippi. I stayed in Bay Saint Louis and traveled and worked from Waveland to Bay Saint Louis to Pass Christian. The trip has changed my life.

I have been struggling with how to begin to report what I found. This first post trip post promises to be poorly organized, but a positive start. Please bear with me as I try to tell this story.

[BigV]

I know what heaven smells like--it smells like bleach. We mucked out a house on Sunday in Waveland. This house is about a mile in from the shoreline and the storm surge flooded the house with seawater. I don't know how deep the water was at this house, but inside the house there was a ceiling fan in the living room. Resting on one of the blades of the fan was a little table clock and on another blade was a videotape. They obviously had floated up there and were left high and dry as the water receded.

The walls, carpet and ceiling were black with mold. Everywhere. The house looked like the set of a horror film. Including the garage, naturally. That much water in motion floats and moves everything around so much that nothing can stays in it's original place unless it was built in. In their garage they had an upright freezer, well stocked with food. When we found it, it had fallen over forward onto its door, with the weight of the freezer and its full load of food sealing the door tightly shut.

We intended to remove the freezer from the garage by tipping it up enough to slide the blade of the handtruck underneath and the haul ass to the curb. When we tipped it up, it began to leak. It poured out a milky yellowish liquid with little sparkles in it. Actually, what I thought were sparkles were little wigglers of some kind--maggots probably. Eww.

The smell coming out of the freezer was BY FAR the most vile revolting gagging choking nasty assault on my senses I've ever encountered. I've smelled everything a baby can make stinky from loaded diaper mines to sour milk bombs. We have had all kinds of pets and they can stink too, from rolling around in who knows what to smeary wet dog. I have eaten things my body has rejected, from either end, that I will never eat again. The smell of all of these put together would be a delicate rose by comparison. The smell coming from this freezer was like the smell of death. I never want to smell it again.

We got the handtruck blade under it and expressed that monster to the curb and it leaked all the way. I came back into the garage to sweep out the crap and mud and funk. While I was doing this, B, another member of our team, was emptying the freezer of its biohazard cargo. FEMA / Army Corps of Engineers / Contractors won't take it unless it's empty and has the doors taped shut. I respect B, and although his sanity is somewhat in question, he will never again have to prove his masculinity to me. Ever.

I was caught in the garage with this evil spirit trying to possess me through my respirator. The spill covered the whole one car garage floor. I was using a push broom to urge the muddy funk out toward the door. As I swept the sides, I bashed into a soaked box of Tide laundry detergent. Great, I thought, I could use the help. After a couple of more strokes with the broom, I thought, Hey, if that's the detergent, the bleach must be around here somewhere...There! I uncapped the bottle and poured out about half the one gallon jug onto the floor, shaking it all over. Normally, that much bleach in such a small space would be a recipe for chemical poisoning, respirator not withstanding. But that...biological warfare agent, against that, it was barely a fair fight. I could breathe without gagging and retching into my respirator. I quickly finished sweeping out the garage and onto the driveway (using more bleach here, because we left a drippy trail out there too) and sweep sweep sweep across the street and into the ditch. Success!

Hours later, on the way home, someone said Boy, I want a shower, I really stink. I said, after today, B.O. smells like perfume. And heaven, well, heaven smells like bleach.

[xoxoxoBruce]

I don't see how maggots could get inside a sealed freezer?
C'mon...fes up...you were really raping and pillaging down there.

[MVM]

BigV, I am the one who wrote to you before you left for Bay St Louis. I had intended to post a reply, but I had one eye closed at 2 or 3 AM and didn't see the "Reply" button! Sorry, I forgot to mention the refrigerators.

Well, now I know why all the refrigerators haven't been picked up! That is the first I have heard about having to have them cleaned out! That is sadistic of whoever made that decision!!! However, I think we will win and they will eventually pick them up. (There are very few people living in that area of Long Beach, so maybe it is a little different than BSL and Waveland.)
There is NO WAY I am opening my mother's refrigerator after all this time. I can smell it when I pull up to her house, even though it is taped shut. My nephews gagged and ran out of the house for air when they accidentally opened it a little, and I could smell it from outside!

I think my refrigerator will never be the same again, after staying closed for 9 days without electricity. I didn't have much in the freezer because I had given it to my sister while moving to my new house I had been renovating, which is now very ... not good. Luckily, I had not moved a lot of my things, so I didn't lose a lot of personal stuff.

It is so wonderful that so many people are coming here to help! We couldn't do it without you! THANK YOU!!!!

[Griff]

BigV you are the man.

[BigV]

First, welcome to the cellar, MVM. I did get your message, and I read it many times. I found it very inspirational and I thank you for the encouragement you gave me. I also shared it with some of my team members and others the church, and the reactions were uniformly positive and thankful.

As to the refrigerators... They are more awful than my essay reveals. I did learn later while working on the last house of our trip that refrigerators with food in them *will* be picked up, in Bay Saint Louis, anyway. It is a different crew(s) that handles the "hazardous waste", a quote from the young supervisor of a trash pickup crew. He referred to the refrigerators as "dirty whites" and told me that the crews got extra for them. I told him those crews earned that extra pay.

When we mucked out a house, we hauled the debris out of the house and to the street. If there were no houses on the opposite side of the street, we dumped it across the street. If there were houses on both sides of the street, we kept to our side and within the width of the house, but we were instructed that we could use the street so long as we left one lane of traffic free. I took this to heart and started at the midline of the street and worked my way to the curb, and then into the yard. This had a couple of advantages. I got some "free" space to dump in, the mess in the street was very obvious and unlikely to be ignored, possibly/probably likely to be picked up earlier. Plus, when the houses were in close proximity to each other, we needed the extra area to dump in because the trackhoe that loaded the trash trailers could only reach twelve feet into the yard, measured from the curb. Plus, we could only dump so high, probably no higher than two wheelbarrow loads high. It was just too hard to roll/raise the subsequent loads over the previous ones. If we could roll up over a door, it was ok, but rolling on the trash was not really possible. It spread out, not up.

As we brought out the debris, we put it into two piles, metal, like refrigerators, ovens, bedframes, televisions, sinks, freezers, stovetops, etc, and the other pile was everything else. I was pleasantly surprised to see the diligence of the cleanup crews in their effort to keep the waste streams separated. I watched the trackhoe operator stop his rig, get out of the cab, and walk into the pile to extract a pair of 13" televisions from the everything else pile and put them in the metal pile. He got back in and fired it up and kept loading.

[Undertoad]

You're one of the good 'uns BigV!

So is Karl Malone

"I wasn't going to just write a check, and I didn't want to go to New Orleans where all the celebrities were going (to grandstand). I wanted to go where no one was, and that's why we went to Pascagoula.

"We took six million dollars of equipment and most of the guys from my company (Malone Properties). But when we got there, they (federal officials) told us that because we wanted to work for free, we had to go home. That we needed a government ID number or a contract to haul out debris.

"I said to them, 'bullshit', we took 30 pieces of equipment and traveled nine hours and we're going to clean up some lots before we leave. So I told them 'I'm getting on my truck, now try to get me off.' I had my security guys there and they tried to stop us but they couldn't - and we cleared 115 houses."