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New Orleans trip

Started by HDT, April 24, 2006, 12:16 PM

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HDT

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A few weeks ago, my wife and I went with a small group from our church to help gut flooded houses in New Orleans.  The first neighborhood we worked in was located in the Lakeview area... a nice middle-class neighborhood in north-central NO, just east of the 17th Street canal.. This area was under about 11 feet of water soon after Katrina passed through and the levees gave way.  One day when we were taking a break, we went down the street (Colbert Street) to inspect other houses on the block, and came across this Tama drumset in the living room of a house.  The destruction in New Orleans and the central Gulf coast is astounding.  You see the pictures on the news, but they simply don't tell the whole story.  I have other pictures I can post, if you would like to see them, but I thought these were particularly poignant.

DRWM

:(

Those photos are heartbreaking.  Who's drums were those?  Yours?

HDT

No... those aren't mine.  My drums are safe and dry, here in Missouri (thank goodness).  We don't know who owned these drums, although it probably wouldn't take much to find out.  Many of the houses in eastern New Orleans are abandoned now... at least for now, until the owners decide what to do with it.  That's part of what we were doing there.  Stripping out EVERYTHING from the houses we worked on, at the request of the home-owner.  These are the people who have plans for their home.  Either sell it to whoever will buy it, or move back in once it's safe.  You can see that these houses are in awful shape, and as the weather gets hotter this summer, they are only going to get worse.  Truely sad.
I would go back down there in a heartbeat to help out again.  It looks like I may get a chance this summer.  I encourage anyone who has the opportunity to go there, to go.

Joe

I notice that a lot of organizations of this stripe have gone down to assist.  This leads me to a questionââ,¬"how's the federal aid down there, that you have seen?  I'm currently off to look for myself, but I wonder if you might be able to offer a different perspective, just as these photographs offer a stark reality in contrast to that which was usually shown in the media?

A late edit, hope you catch it:  What are some of the necessary precautions needed in order to do such a stripping?  Is there much of a health threat?  Is there professional guidance?

mapexdrummer1234

I went down there on a four day missions trip. Missed two days of school. It was very heartbreaking/

We went around town, we saw an abandoned music shop. Saxophones and trumpets were broken and washed out.

Terrible thing.

If anyone has picked up the relif CD it is worth getting.