BigBendFishing.Net

I'll be catching up on posts after spending the week in New Orleans leading a group of college students who gave up their Spring Break to go work with two home owners who are still rebuilding after Katrina. This was my fist trip to NOLA post Katrina. It's been 2 1/2 years and the place is still like a third world country. Amazing. We drove for miles and miles through residential areas that are still destroyed and abandoned. Makes you think. We saw the material loss, but I thought about how many families are forever altered by that storm. Take a family home and sink it in 8 feet of water destroying everything? What does that do to a marriage, family, occupation, etc.?

I know as Floridians we are no strangers to hurricanes. I remember Andrew. Crazy stuff.

If you guys ever get a chance to do some work in NOLA it is a great experience. I would suggest it. It's also good to look out over those Bayou's and think about all the Redfish out there.

Drove through NOLA twice this week. It really is a sad sight. On Grand Isle the storm surge came of the bay and not the gulf which saved a lot of peoples beach front homes. Fortunately they probably had the means to fix them up. Most of the homes that were destroyed were blue collar folks. Talked with a younger guy surf fishing one night and after he gave us some of his spots he told us his story. 8 feet of water in his two story home. Insurance is only covering about half and he is living in his uncles RV until he can afford to fix it up. I can only imagine what living in an RV with a family of 5 is like.

I am sorry for all those folks too, however, I have to say that rebuilding in a hole is not a good idea. Why can't the governmental authorities just use common sense and NOT let them rebuild. Use the money to relocate them. If they do rebuild, it WILL happen again, then everybody will be asking why government let them rebuild there.

I also will have to say if it was my home, I would be in there myself and have the mess at least cleaned out within a few weeks of being able to get back in. From what I see, a lot of those folks just either gave up, or are too lazy to try to help themselves.

Dubble

Looks to me like most folks have either moved on/out. Most of the ones that stayed are rebuilding and doing the work themselves and hiring out what they can. DT I have no doubt that you would have your place fixed up and going in no time. You've got the skill and know how to accomplish that. You could probably do it on a shoe string budget as well. But most people can't do that. The lady we helped has been a middle school teacher for 30 years. When Katrina hit she was a single mother with a 12 year old son and taking care of her elderly mother. Two years from retiring. Katrina hits and she looses her home. She then finds out that everyone in her school is fired because of the storm. She lost her pension, benefits, all of her possessions, literally everything but the money she had in the bank and the lives of her family. She is a hard working, kind woman. She's done a lot of work herself on her home and hired out what she could afford. (She had to live off of her savings in Baton Rouge supporting her family until she could come back, get work and start rebuilding her home.) That's the kind of folk I don't mind lending a hand to. It really was a privilege to be honest.

GT I think what you did is very honorable...

I saw this article on yahoo and thought id post it. Not NOLA but it kind of is the same message.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080316/ap_ ... bayou_folk" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;