Project is 'Immersion 101'

When NPR reporter Michelle Trudeau agreed to join up on the New Orleans project, everyone was thrilled. She brought a bit of grace to the scrappy mission and showed how much she cares in numerous ways. “She is LOVELY,” Muckraker Suzanne Stouse wrote of Michelle. So is her essay.

I had never been to New Orleans before. I’d of course watched the coverage of Katrina on television -- about the Superdome, the people trapped on the bridges, the helicopters rescuing folks off the tops of homes. But I’m not a news junkie, so frankly, I watched only sporadically. And, I admit, after a week or two, in late August, early September, 2005, as coverage diminished, I moved on to other things. You know how it is -- family, work, next project around the house.

Then I received the invitation from the Dart people to go to New Orleans and help gut homes. I was very surprised by the call: New Orleans still needs help? A year and a half later? This stunned me. I wanted to see this for myself. Sign me up! Deirdre did her magic getting us all coordinated and ticketed, and I found myself jetting across the country from southern California to New Orleans, Thursday, March 22nd.

Debris outside a destroyed house in the Lower 9th Ward

First impressions on the way into town by cab from the Louis Armstrong Airport: poor, disheveled, industrial, flat, bleak. But as I traveled further into the city, the tones change. There are ancient live oaks reaching down over the streets, giving shade and welcome, blazing azaleas, dark pines, old stately homes, porches out front, wide boulevards with “neutral zones” of green cool between. Color and elegance and history. The cab delivers me to 4748 Annunciation, across the street from a barren lot with a dozen FEMA trailers. I let myself in. The place is clean, comfortable, inviting; goodies to eat on the kitchen counter; beer, cokes, water in the fridge. I am the only one staying at The Dart House this particular weekend.

Later, toward early evening, my cell phone rings. It’s John McCusker, a photographer from the Times-Picayune. “Welcome to the world’s favorite disaster zone,” he says cheerfully.

“I’ve never been here,” I tell him.

“Well, good, then you won’t know the difference.”

We talk about plans for the evening: “We gotta get you something to eat, and then go hear some jazz,” he tells me.

I’m in good hands, right from the start.

John takes me out to a local restaurant where I am introduced to char-broiled oysters, etouffe, bread pudding. All New Orleans specialties. We talk about what he went through during Katrina, and his experiences during the 18 months of post-Katrina. His recovery, at so many levels, has been slow and painful. John drives us through the French Quarter, heading toward “The Palm Court,” a favorite jazz spot of his. As we enter, John is greeted with great gusto by the musicians, standing at the bar, taking a break after their first set. John talks shop with them over a beer -- his knowledge of jazz is deep and passionate. Later, the musicians go back up on stage, pick up their instruments, tune them for a moment, and then start to play. Really play. Clarinet, trumpet, piano, drums, bass, trombone. All swinging and plowing the grooves.

Times-Pic photographer Kathy Anderson on the front stoop of a house the Muckrakers gutted.

Friday morning Kathy Anderson, a photographer with the Times-Picayune, picks me up at the Dart House. We head to the Ninth Ward –- an area that over the centuries has sunk to 11 feet below the water line. And it was here that the levees broke. We drive slowly along the remaining rutted roads. It is complete devastation. Leveled. Like it has been bombed till flattened. There are now just concrete slabs, the bare foundations, scrapped to the bone, where neighborhoods used to exist. Whole communities, blocks and blocks, no longer. Now a desolate moonscape. It doesn’t seem possible: just a short drive from where I’d sat listening to jazz the evening before. Here, this twilight zone of destruction. I can see no signs of recovery. No revival. No returning.

Saturday is a day of work –- gutting a house. Organized by the master, Suzanne Stouse from the T-P, founder of “The Muckrakers,” a group of volunteers from the paper who are helping in the recovery, gutting homes so families can begin to rebuild. Our group drives to a poor but fairly intact neighborhood. There are children, cars, street signs, sidewalks. FEMA trailers outside several houses along the street -- a good sign: this community is coming back. The house Suzanne targets for help is owned by a young man, early 30’s. When the levees broke, water rose up the first floor. He and his family fled to the second floor, waited for help there for five days. No one came. Finally, the young man and his uncle walked waist-high through the flooded streets the several miles to the Superdome to get help. His uncle, though, got a deadly infection in his leg from walking through the contaminated water, and had to have his lower leg amputated. Now, 18 months later, the young man and his family are still living in a FEMA trailer parked next to his house. He says he tried to gut the house himself, but it was just too much for him. Our work group is about 20 strong. With crowbars, hammers, sledgehammers, wheelbarrows, it takes most of the day to complete the gutting. The interior of the first floor is now just a shell. Bare struts and supports. Ready, though, for the owner to begin building anew.

I came to New Orleans to be educated about what had passed here. To see how the city had been laid waste. And to see how it had recovered. What I had not expected to see is so much devastation a year and a half after the storm. New Orleans seems severely and permanently altered –- physically, socially, psychologically. Whole neighborhoods no longer exist; and it seems unlikely they will recover. Over 1,500 of its citizens have died. Over 1.36 million of its citizens are dispersed around the United States. The loss of communities, of a culture, of a heritage unique in America is tragic and painful to witness. I thank the Dart Society for making it possible for me to witness this, and for making the commitment to never forget New Orleans. And I thank my brave colleagues at the Times-Picayune for taking me in and sharing their stories and their lives in New Orleans. They are a group of extraordinary survivors who have lived through the worst with courage, grace, and resiliency. I will return in a heartbeat if they need me.

-- Michelle Trudeau