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A Time to Break Down, and a Time to Build
In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, ORU students help by tearing things apart.
By April Marciszewski - Tulsa World Staff Writer
Photo by A. Cuervo/Tulsa World
10/19/2005
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One block over, John Tapper posted his phone number on his house for the Federal Emergency Management Agency to call, but two weeks ago, a pastor called the number to say more than 100 ORU students would be coming. Did Tapper need help gutting his house?
Hurricane Katrina tore through houses and drowned neighborhoods along the Gulf Coast on Aug. 29. Now, homeowners have to rip out their soggy carpets, tear down their walls to the studs and bash out their ceilings.
They're waiting on insurance companies and FEMA for compensation so they can clean up and rebuild.
But this week, residents in several neighborhoods in Mississippi don't have to wait for the money to come. They get the brawn of 143 ORU students, volunteering during their fall break.
Abigail Poyer, an ORU freshman wearing a head-to-toe protective suit, jumped and heaved a sledgehammer to punch holes in Tapper's sprayed acoustic ceiling. Then she dragged a rake past the fluffy white insulation, down through the nubby white ceiling.
"They're wonderful, man. I'm telling you," Tapper said of ORU students as he surveyed the growing cloud of insulation beneath his front picture window.
Tapper built the one-story house in 1978 and added a master bathroom and a "party room" with a wet bar and television in 1988. He and his family plan to move back in as soon as they can.
In Premack's house, the volunteers' feet squished along the carpeted hallway as they led the way to a gaping hole in the master bedroom wall. The neighbor's deck had started the hole, and students enlarged it as they pulled away wallboard.
In Premack's living room, brown flecks about five feet up the wall marked where water had risen in the flood.
"Furniture floated so much and just banged into drywall and made huge holes," Premack said.
Back in the bedroom, Shastity Driscoll touched her lower back and hamstrings, sore from picking up broken branches and clearing yards in a Long Beach, Miss., neighborhood on Monday.
She came to Mississippi because she realized "the most impactful thing is helping others."
"I spent my fall break changing lives, and that's going to go down in the books for eternity," Driscoll said.
Helping Premack sort through the debris caked on her carpet has made Driscoll thankful for all she has, and she said the experience has caused her to trust God more.
Such widespread destruction of personal belongings and communities could happen anywhere. Next time, Driscoll said, it could be her possessions that get washed away.
On Premack's second visit to her home since the hurricane, she remembered when she arrived in Biloxi in 1993 with only what fit in her car.
"Now I've got a little bit more than that left," she said. "It's not so bad."
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April Marciszewski 581-8475
april.marciszewski@tulsaworld.com
