Reality hits

Remember when I said there was no devastation? I only said that because we hadn’t seen the Gentilly neighborhood yet.

The volunteers were given their assignment around 8:30 this morning – gutting a house at 5200 Warrington drive in Gentilly. The house is owned by Yvonne Birdsall, whom we have met, but was occupied by tenants who have now moved to Mississippi.

Warrington drive is the first street east of the London Avenue canal. The I-panels lining the canal breached just a few houses down from Birdsall’s, and water was soon up to the ceiling of the one-story houses lining the street. When the water receded, it left everything covered in mud. One year later, the mud is still there, only dried and cracked.

To better understand how the flooding occurred, check out this great animated graphic from the Times-Picayune. You can see the Gentilly neighborhood just south of Lake Pontchartrain, bordered by London Avenue Canal on the west and the Industrial Canal on the east. There were two breaches on London Avenue Canal; Birdsall’s house is just next to the southernmost breach.

The mood was light in the van as we were driving to the worksite, even when we were stuck in the morning traffic. It was suddenly much quieter, however, when we left the highway and entered Gentilly. We were all staring out the windows, taking in the sights. Broken windows. Piles of debris. Caved in roofs. Six-feet-high water line.

All houses with no exception are spray-painted with the famous X everyone has seen on TV and newspapers. On top of the X is the date the house was inspected - two to three weeks after the storm for most places in the neighborhood. On the right side, there is cryptic code indicating particular hazards inside; in many cases, that was left blank. We know better than to think it means there are no hazards. On the left side, the group inspecting the location wrote its initials. At the bottom of the X is the most famous and most morbid indication: the number of corpses found inside. Fortunately, we’ve only seen zeros so far.

Warrington drive is eerily quiet. No one lives there. The better houses are gutted and boarded up. Most others are still full of moldy furniture, the doors torn down and the yards overgrown. Wasps are the only residents.

Whether human residents will come back is still unknown. Birdsall told me that once her house is gutted, she will wait to see what becomes of the neighborhood before making a decision on the future of her house. It could be bulldozed. Still, the volunteers keep cleaning.