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By Rev. Rich Knight
York, Maine
Katrina, One Year Later
The Continuing Wake of Hurricane Katrina
Being Stretched by Church and a Hurricane
One of the things I like a lot about being a part of a church is it stretches me. Christianity stretches me. God stretches me through my church. It’s because of the church that I have done things like put a new roof on a seminary building in Honduras, built an elderly man a new front porch in East Machias, Maine, and painted a struggling family’s house in Ontario, Canada. All of these projects were on mission trips with our church. All of them challenged me and helped me grow, not only in my work skills but also in my confidence and faith as well.
Of all the things that have challenged me in past trips, none of them compares to a week-long mission trip to New Orleans this past July. The heat and humidity were tough but it was seeing the devastation that was the hardest.
Hurricane Katrina as you'll remember hit last Labor Day weekend. A city of 460,000 people pre-Katrina, New Orleans now numbers about 200,000. We worked on one house in the 9th Ward and another in the Orleans Parish. Both were virtual ghost towns, though in the second neighborhood perhaps 20% of the houses were being worked on or had people living in them.
We learned that the wake of a hurricane this size is in many ways very quiet. No children playing. No dogs barking. Not even birds singing or squirrels running up and down trees. Nothing. The grass didn’t grow back. Just very tall and ugly weeds. On the houses you could see the stains of the water marks from the height of the flooding. They were nine and ten feet high. One house we worked on had high ceilings with ceiling fans. The fins of the fans were drooping because they had sat in water for weeks.
Our task was to completely gut the first floor of the homes. The first day and a half we finished up a house that another crew had started. Then Tuesday afternoon we got our own house. It had not been touched since the hurricane. First we removed the furniture and everything else that had been floating and then landed. We sorted through peoples’ belongings throwing out 99.9% of what we found. Imagine the smell of the year old water that came out of the refrigerator once we got it upright. We took out all the appliances as well as the cabinets in the kitchen and bathrooms. All had been compromised by the water. Then we removed the dry wall. Once you got a hole into it you could remove most of it with just your hands. By the time we finished all that remained inside the house were studs.
God’s presence was felt during our trip. I saw God’s compassion and care in my fellow workcampers from York - Sue Sullivan, Linda Havumaki, Kate Estes, Brad Lajoie and Derek Kaknes. They were all amazing, showing incredible strength and resiliency.
God also blessed us each day with visitors, people who crossed our path who would tell us their stories and thank us for coming. There was the police chaplain, Jeff, who had worked nonstop for weeks following Katrina, helping with the rescue operations by day and ministering to his fellow officers in the evenings. There was the laid off school teacher who wondered if he’d ever teach kids again in New Orleans.
Of all the visitors we had, I think it was Albert who helped us the most. It was our first day at work. We were finishing up a townhouse in a complex made up of about 75 townhouses. None of them were occupied. Albert was the only homeowner we saw. He came to check on his unit. He told us that progress was slow. The board of the condo association had met a few times, mostly by conference calls, since they were spread from Florida to Texas now. They had calculated that they needed about one third of the home owners to rebuild in order to save the development. Albert thanked us profoundly even though we weren’t working on his unit. “You’re not just helping Mr. & Mrs. Reed,” he said, “You’re saving this whole neighborhood.”
Let me end where I began. Being a part of a church stretches me. The church urges me to do stuff like this. Knowing me, I’m pretty sure that without the church I would not have gotten involved so deeply in such work. The church enables me to be a part of something greater than myself. It enables me in some small way to take part in God’s work here upon this earth. This summer our church, First Parish Church, sent over 70 people on mission trips - to Honduras, to East Machias, Maine, and to New Orleans. I apologize for publicly bragging a little bit, but I think that’s a pretty remarkable number. It makes me proud and grateful to be a part. One other person I crossed paths with on this trip was James Carville, the quirky, opinionated CNN commentator and advisor to President Clinton. Carville cut in front of me at a snack shop in Washington’s Dulles airport. “Where are you flying to today?” he asked. “New Orleans, to help with the cleanup,” I replied. “Are you part of a church group or something?” “Yes. I am, Mr. Carville.” Yes, I am.
Rev. Rich Knight is the Senior Pastor of First Parish Church in York Village. You may contact him at Rich@firstparishyork.org.