NSCC group seeing change in third trip to New Orleans

LYNN – Three years after Hurricane Katrina ravaged New Orleans, the community is still struggling to rebuild its proud and historic neighborhoods from the waterlogged rubble the storm left behind.Even as civil rights groups and high-profile celebrities lead the charge to rebuild homes and restore normalcy to the lives of the city’s residents, the work remains overwhelming. There is always another family struggling to survive, and always another home in need of expensive repairs.For a group of North Shore Community College volunteers, three years of cleaning, demolishing and rebuilding in the city’s Lower Ninth Ward is beginning to show a return as clean, safe homes are now starting to sprout from the once debris-riddled properties.A group of 18 students and seven faculty members took the trip to the city this year in conjunction with the Methodist Disaster Relief Organization, which assigns volunteers to homes in need of work, from painting and restoration to complete demolition.Speaking from inside a home Monday morning, NSCC President Wayne Burton said this year’s trip has been rewarding for the volunteers because many of the houses they were in last year have been fully restored.”There has been quite a bit of progress since we have been down here last year,” he said. “The school across the street has reopened, and some of the shopping centers and stores are back open too. We have moved this year from the gutting stages to more finishing stuff, like painting or replacing floors. Life is slowly returning back to normal, whatever that is.”Still, things are rough for the residents of New Orleans. Burton says the owner of one house they have been assigned to paid $40,000 for a private contractor to repair the damages to her home, only to have that contractor disappear with the money.For every restored home or property the group sees, there are still many other neighboring structures that are overgrown and look as if they have not been touched since the storm.”It is odd down here, there is a fair amount of lawlessness and thievery,” said Burton. “Some of these places are completely overgrown, covered with debris. Others have been taken down to just concrete.”The NSCC group is far from the only clan of volunteers looking to help that area of the city. An organization lead by Brad Pitt recently set up shop in the neighborhood, along with other charity groups such as the Red Cross.As one student asked him to pass along a putty-knife, Burton explained that the volunteer effort goes beyond title or stature in their professional lives. In New Orleans, everyone is equal in the effort to restore the community.”Down here, we are all the same. There is no respect for my rank. It is a good thing – a rare character-builder,” he said.The volunteers worked Monday to grout a floor in a home they are restoring, after spending the day Saturday cleaning up debris from the lawn and planting flowers in front of a schoolteacher’s home.On the way to their new assignments, the group visited a home they had helped gut last year, once reduced to a pile of rubble, which is now re-built to almost new.”What is gratifying is that a house we gutted last year in the Lower Ninth Ward can be re-done so nicely, and a family is back living in it,” Burton said.