by Rose Marie Klee

On Friday, September 1, several members of the Austin Branch and The University of Texas at Austin student chapter of ASCE embarked on the road to New Orleans to participate in a powerful labor of love.

A group of about 50 people, which included the university engineering students and local professionals, caravanned from the engineering school in Austin to St Bernard’s Parish on the east side of New Orleans. We arrived at around 2:30am on Saturday morning at “Camp Hope,” an elementary school which had been converted to a Habitat for Humanity base camp. Individuals and groups from across the country converge at this location to stay for one night or up to many months, assisting victims of Hurricane Katrina by gutting flooded homes and building new houses.

On Saturday we worked on houses in “Musician’s Village,” a project located in the Upper Ninth Ward. The project was conceived by Harry Connick, Jr. and Branford Marsalis and will result in 81 new houses for displaced musicians. Our group spent the day painting, roofing, and installing insulation, along with volunteers from many other places. Following our work day, participants had a rare treat—we took a tour of several levee failures led by Austin’s own Dr. Robert Gilbert.

Dr. Gilbert, a civil engineering professor at the university’s College of Engineering, is part of an elite panel of 14 experts assembled by ASCE national. The “ASCE External Review Panel” (ERP) was created to conduct an independent review of the USACE Interagency Performance Evaluation Taskforce investigation of the New Orleans hurricane protection system failures. It was amazing to have such a detailed and technical civil engineering lesson along the way!

On Saturday evening we took the opportunity to partake of the famous French Quarter ambiance, and it was quite the contrast to St Bernard’s or the Ninth Ward. There was still ample evidence of the past year’s tragedy, with the high water marks and buildings in various states of renovation, but the good old New Orleans spirit was definitely in the air and the unrivaled Creole cuisine was delectable!

For our second day of work, the group split into separate teams to gut three different houses. This work involves removing all of the debris and household contents, and stripping out the drywall and insulation. It was a profound and emotional experience, and even more so where the home owners were actually on site to help us preserve whatever sentimental items could be recovered. The end result of our work day was a shell of a house containing skeletal interior stud walls, and a large mountain of debris in the front lawn.

In orientation the previous day we had received the warning, “DO NOT OPEN THE FRIDGE!!!” This advice proved to be extremely significant; however with the turbulent flooding that many houses experienced it was challenging to move the upturned fridges without ‘breaking the seal.’ P-ugh! (Fortunately we also remembered the suggestion to wait as late as possible to move the fridge!)

The entire trip was a wonderful and intense opportunity to experience in person what most of us have only seen in pictures, and to make a personal contribution and gesture of sympathy and hope to all victims of last year’s tragedy. It is remarkable how fresh the devastation still seems one year later and how much work there is yet to be done. As civil engineers it is a valuable reminder of the impact our work can have on society, for better and for worse.

I am hopeful that the Austin Branch will return there again en force!