It wasn’t until when I was leaning on my rake yesterday, staring bewildered at old family photos on the floor, that the facts sunk in, “I’m in someones old apartment, pushing a pile of their abandoned belongings with a garden rake to the window so it can be shoveled out and pitched into the dumpster….this is crazy.”
The aftermath of hurricane Katrina is still very tangible here in New Orleans. The smell of molding drywall, roting mattresses, and mounds of stinky clothes, pictures, and non valuable belongings. Valuables where taken from the apartments not long after residents were allowed back.
Buildings that have been abandoned since the hurricane have a journal entry on one of its outer walls. A spray painted code indicates when the building was checked, by which authority (police, fire, from which state, etc.),if there were any dangers in the building, and if there were any bodies found inside.
One of my jobs this week, with my friend Jason, was clearing the buildings of bees and wasps before the groups would go in and start cleaning. As Jason and I opened the buidlings up and slowly worked our way through the trashed apartments, I’m not gonna lie, the possibility of finding a corpse was pretty great in my mind. We didn’t but we did find a dead possum, which was pretty nasty.
Check out this video made for the group that I’m helping with
