Day 67: 11/12/06
Driving from the tourist-trap that is the French Quarter to the war-zone of St. Bernard's Parish is quite dramatic. On our way we passed the famous Upper and Lower 9th Wards, two of the poorest neighborhoods in NO and two of the hardest hit by Katrina. St. Bernard's Parish is home to many tiny suburbs of NO, like Chalmette, St. Bernard's, and Violet. Camp Hope is located at the W. Smith Jr. Elementary School in Violet, LA. It was a once thriving school and you can almost hear the echoes of little feet in the hallway. Like the buildings we would be gutting and clearing of debris in the next week, this school had to be gutted. It's uncertain if kids will ever run these halls again. 
On an afternoon walk, we pass by our first debris pile. Garbage is piled up everywhere in the Parish and they've had to open up closed landfills to handle the immense amount of garbage.
The Camp is located no more than a quarter mile from the Mississippi River. The levees here are the most enormous that we've seen. Luckily the river levees held, it was the levees lining the intracoastal canals that were breached. 
Our sleeping quarters were shared with 15 other volunteers in what used to be a classroom. You can see that the ceilings and drywall had to be removed. Hard to believe this school was once under eight feet of floodwater. That said, we're happy to not be in our tents from now on. We'll take mice over bears any day.
posted by Joe & Ben Palmquist @ 10:18 PM
1 comments
1 Comments:
Hi, my name is Michelle and I am currently a junior at UW-La Crosse. A professor in one of my classes suggested we take a few minutes to look at your website, and I found it to be very worthwhile. Thank you for letting others know of the current state of the Mississippi River. Even though I reside in La Crosse, I was unaware of some of the large problems that surround such a resourceful body of water to the rest of the U.S. I also believe some of the advice you gave to other people regarding how to help this situation can be very beneficial. I hope that through this site, others can see the problem and try to help. Lastly, I was wondering if either of you had any knowledge on possible effects of global warming and the Mississippi River, because I know that is an environmental issue that is becoming more addressed today. I believe most Americans just need to learn to be less wasteful (myself included). Our resources are too limited to use them carelessly. Thank you again for releasing this site, I found it to be very educational! Best wishes in future endeavors.
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