Renetta's House

We went to Renetta's house today. There were two groups of us, the other group worked on the Beecher Memorial Church UCC, also in the Gentilly Neighborhood that had various amounts of flooding. Renetta's house is an old (1900 ish), New Orleans style "shotgun" house whose floor is about four feet above ground. The water came up around a foot above her floor, and stayed for quite awhile.
She greeted us in tears, which I don't think were were from gratefullness as much as from uncertainty and concern about what was going to happen next. She is a member of the Beecher Church, and had requested help from the UCC. Alan Coe, our UCC Disaster Coordinator, had briefly told us that we we would be cleaning out her house and removing the plaster on her interior walls up four feet from the floor (for new sheetrock). The mold extended up only a foot or so in the living room, but then in the closets the mold behind the hanging clothes extended the heighth of the closet, and was really thick and dark on the plaster. Renetta had already had help in removing most of the furniture in the house, but there were many personal articles and books, etc., from her life there with her mother since moving in 1995 (her mother died a few years ago).
We split in half, and my bunch of Cal students and I started on destructing the lathe and plaster with 1/2 inch sheetrock over it in the living room. We wear "paper" disposable coveralls and masks and work with crowbars, hammers, and small sledge hammers. Our crew had great spirit, limited "skill" to begin with, but in the tradition of UC Berkeley rapidly came up to speed and tore into the task at hand.
The other bunch had the more difficult task of taking out Renetta's personal belongings to the curb. She really didn't want to look at them, but as the pile at the curb started to grow, she took a more active interest in what was piling up! Renetta also started to trust us and the process. She had been layed off from the hospital where she had worked, had used the little money she got from her insurance to pay off the mortgage, and really doesn't know how her life is going to go. (She was also worried about squatters coming to live in her house, even with no utilities available, and how she could evict them).
By the end of the day, the house was mostly cleared out (except the kitchen), the walls were bared four feet up in the living and dining room and Renetta was smiling! We are going back tomorrow to hopefully finish the work of cleanout. We don't know how the process will continue after we move on to some other task but we plan to encourage Alan Coe to continue with Renetta's house so she can move back in or whatever to get on with her life. -- Terry Jackson