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The famous cathedral in New Orealns

two students are waiting for the bus. He was wearing her hat

 

a line of buses while waiting for the moving time

A destroied house

A student takes off walls

Some students during work time

The idea of creating this web-site came to my mind after I went to New Orleans during Spring break 2006.

Since the Hurricane Katrina disaster, I was looking for an opportunity to help Katrina victims. I found this great opportunity to help victims last Spring break. I have gotten great personal reward by participating in helping people who lost everything. Americans usually take the initiative helping any country in hard times and disasters, and I enjoyed helping this generous country.

However, before I went I was hesitant because I had a lot of work I had to finish after that break. On the other hand, many students and I were thinking that we need some rest and I knew the Katrina trip had a lot of hard work. In addition to that I would come back to only get one day of rest before the first week in the second term of that semester. However, what happened in New Orleans so inspired me that I decided to create this website in order to encourage students to go give a hand.

I am not going to tell you about my great experience right now. But I will let you see and hear different stories, student reactions, and how much reward we gained.

I have no hesitation to encourage everybody who is able to participate in this duty to go there and give a hand.

Here are some words which were written by a student once she came back from Spring break trip.

"Imagine all the things in your home that are less than 10 feet off the ground: Your baby photo albums, your computer, your wedding china, your grandmother’s antiques, birth certificates and important papers, the old family Bible, your cat. Now fill up your home with 10’ of Mississippi river water and mud. Leave it for 7 months to slowly rot and grow black mold. You can guess what that does for a home.

That is exactly what happened to almost 40,000 homes in the New Orleans area alone, along with countless businesses, churches, stores, and schools. Last week 107 people from George Mason University took a 24 hour bus ride down to New Orleans. We joined over 4,000 students from 46 states. We had a week long house-gutting party!

Gutting a home includes removing all the destroyed furniture, pulling out dry wall, carpets, ceilings (if they hadn’t already collapsed), door jams, kitchen appliances, bath tubs, and smashed cars from car ports. Many homes have 6” of tar-like mud coating every surface. To rebuild a flooded home you must first reduce it to wall studs.
And the fridge. Oooooh the fridge. Rotting food mixed with river water makes an indescribable smell and mess. The girls wisely let the guys on the team handle the fridges and washing machines ;).
In many cases the home owners were present when we gutted their homes. Instead of being sad that their homes were destroyed, they were very thankful for the help. In the past 7 months, FEMA has cleaned out 130 homes. Last week alone students gutted over 800 homes, plus a church and a grocery store."