The alarm goes off at 5:50am. My entire body aches as I drag it out of bed. I pull on my cargo pants, back brace, and work boots then throw my leather gloves and particle/gas mask in my backpack. I hop on my moms bicycle and head out before the sun rises. Im one of the few on the road, and the only one not in a car. The morning is heavy, humid and totally quiet. I arrive sweaty to the R.H.I.N.O. Headquarters (Rebuilding Hope in New Orleans), a fulltime volunteer program started by the Saint Charles Presbyterian Church. Its 6:40am, the truck leaves at 6:45am, I have enough time to dash inside, shoot a cup of coffee and slop peanut butter and jam on two pieces of white bread. I hop shotgun next to Volunteer Supervisor and Excellent Human, Will Duncan, in the cab of the RHINO Mobile Tool Shed, a converted Penske moving truck. Behind us follows a van with 20 or so volunteers from any and every American city, although the majority seem to be from Pennsylvania and Kentucky.

We leave the functioning cafes, street lights, public schools, plumbing, and police departments known as the (Sliver on the River) and head in to the Ghost Town that is THE OTHER 85% OF New Orleans. I navigate our way through miles of abandon neighborhoods and wasted homes with a map of New Orleans in my lap. We circle around empty streets and pass overgrown yards and the occasional pile of rubble, unable to find our destination. Our maps help is contingent on the streets we drive actually having signs that label them. Will spots a lone character standing in the street 15 or so blocks away. We drive closer revealing an old pudgy woman standing in front of what appears to be an abandon home. She thumbs the bottom of the LSU t-shirt she wears and slightly chews her bottom lip. We have found our (work order).

Me and the other volunteers wait on the sidewalk while Will and the woman walk through the home. We begin unloading the truck (wheel barrows, crow bars, dollies, shovels, trash cans, chisels, hammers, axes, mallets, sledge hammers, push brooms, pick axes, pliers, you name it) and then set the gear in to attack formation, two lines facing the house.

While people stretch, I look down the street in both directions.

I see no cars. No lights. No people. No movement.

I DO see wasted yards, dead trees, wily overgrown lawns, boarded windows, piles of trash, spray painted doors (FEMA codes for if any dead people were found inside the home) and a black line 8 feet up on the side of every single house as far as I can see; a disgusting black line marking the top of the water level left by the toxic slush that filled these homes and stood for 5 days.

I shake my head and exhale remembering how only a few months ago I thought people where lazy for not scrubbing that damn line off their houses. I mean, its been a half a year, I thought. Just scrub it off and lets get on.

How naive of me.

I do not think that anymore.

Will and the old woman emerge. We crowd around. Will introduces Ms. Patty, an 80 year old painter born and bred in New Orleans. Will asks if she would be willing to tell us a little about her home, its story and also, if she will, a bit about her Katrina experience. Ten minutes later 20 people are crying in her yard, hands on one anothers shoulders as Ms. Patty tells the most horrible story weve heard all week, full of overwhelming descriptions of trying to get her mentally disabled 42 year old daughter out of the city, finding her front door smashed in and 10 years worth of paintings slashed to pieces, scooping up the bodies of 9 of her crippled cats who drown in the rising water in her living room and hearing that Rita finished what Katrina started by caving in her attic destroying the memorabilia of her late husband.

The tears streaming from her eyes abruptly stop and she tells us she cant go on any further. We stand in silence for a moment. Will thanks her for sharing her story, then asks if we may enter. She nods her head.

The orange morning sun begins to crest over the horizons abandon houses.

We wipe our eyes, pull on our gas masks and push open the front door.

Even through my top of the line protective mask, the smell hits me first, a pungent cocktail of rotted food, dead animals, raw sewage and the bottom of Lake Pontatrain. The house is dark and musty, but my eyes adjust and reveal destruction that is hard to describe. The difference from the outside of her house to the inside is striking.

It seems as though her home is simply a wooden box to hold polluted mud.

Before I entered my first Katrina flooded home, I had forgotten to take in to account that most items found in a home float. Couches, refrigerators, dressers, etc. The damage I expected was based on the idea that the homes filled with water, then the water went away and everything inside was then wet, but essentially had been left how it originally was, give or take a thorough cleaning job.

I could not have been more wrong.

After an entire home is submerged in liquid poison for five days, NOTHING IS SALVIGABLE. EVERYTHING IS DANGEROUS. AND THE HOME LOOKS LIKE THE BOTTOM OF THE SWAMP. The walls are bloated and moments from collapse. The windows are either broken or stained dark yellow tinting eerie orange beams of seemingly poisonous sunlight and the floors are several feet thick with congealed chunks of rotted debris and personal belongings. A year is also more than adequate time for anything living; bacteria, insect, rodent, to make itself quite at home.

The volunteers shuffle in, climb over damp piles of personal belongings and hold on to one another for balance. No one just jumps right in to work. They instead stand in silence just staring, unable to take it all in. 70 years of memories completely lost.

Worse.

Destroyed. And Poisoned too boot.

And then the thought enters, the realization, the truth, that this is only 1 room, in 1 house, on 1 block, in 1 neighborhood, in 1 city, in 1 state that was totally wasted by 1 storm.

The thought is almost too much to bear. If I spend too much time on the shear size of the devastation Katrina caused, I fear I may become despondent, unable to engage, lost in an overwhelming feeling of hopelessness. I feel it come over me. A slow drowse like a warm heroine overdose.

Then I snap to, clap my hands and begin ripping up a congealed chunk of clothing, electronics and mud from the floor. Roaches scurry in every direction. Someone else joins me. And before I know it, twenty masked strangers are buzzing in and out hauling mounds of contaminated effects.

1 person does make a difference, I think. Committing to 1 house does make change. Giving 1 woman a shot at a new beginning IS WORTH DOING. Contributing to 1 neighborhood CAN have an effect. Spending the time and chipping in for 1 city does have a palpable impact.

No one talks and we work without a break for the next two hours.