Hundreds of Minnesotans have gone down to New Orleans over the past year and a half to gut houses and otherwise help out in the flood-ravaged Ninth Ward---most volunteering through their church or synagogue. Now the private sector is pitching in: Last weekend, 30 construction workers from Minnesota companies flew to the city under the leadership of the Twin Cities-based River of Hope. Created last year by Red Cross therapist Dr. Rebecca Thomley, and funded in part out of savings from the nonprofit she heads, Orion Associates, the organization has brought some 300 plumbers and roofers to work on more than 35 homes for the poor and elderly. Thomley, whose Red Cross truck was among the first into the city in October 2005, has since returned seven times. Last year she put Sen. Mark Dayton to work. "Whatever criticism you might have of him," she says. "He worked hard."

Two months ago, River of Hope opened a mental health center in a gutted dry cleaner in the Upper Ninth Ward, open Saturdays with volunteers flying in every weekend--Thomley warns new recruits about the rats. Most of those walking-in just need to be heard. "Services have not been restored to this area, and there's certainly a feeling of having been forgotten," says Thomley. "The government is not there, and these are our people, these are Americans." Volunteers can call Zenith Services at 763.450.5000.

Our final day in town, a group of 13 of us went back to Larry's house. First, we took down all the drywall and ceilings. Larry also had a list of stuff he wanted done. We cleaned out the tool shed in his backyard. Larry lived with his dad, who is in his 80s. He had quite a collection of tools and unfortunately most of it had to be thrown away. Some of the other teams of volunteers finished up their houses early and then dropped by Larry's to help out.More >>

Rose, whose house we cleaned the day the day before, turned up in Slidell. She's a tour guide and quite knowledgeable about the history of N.O. She showed us the main two breaches in the levees: 17th Avenue and London Avenue. We also went to the Lower Ninth Ward and St. Bernard Parish, where there was an 8-mile breach in the levee. The main hurricane storm surge came right up MR GO (Mississippi River Gulf Outlet), which is in this area.More >>

All around the New Orleans area there are these X's painted on people's houses. In each section of the X there are things written. The upper quadrant is the date the house was checked, the left is the unit that did the check and the lower quadrant is the number of dead people found. I mostly saw zeros, but I did see some ones and twos in some places that were hit badly.More >>

When we pulled up at East Hermes Street this morning, some city workers had the street blocked off. They were sorting through all the trash we had put by the curb. They were wearing full protective body suits and masks. We wondered if we should have the same gear to protect ourselves. They told us they were looking for any hazardous materials. They quickly finished up the work they were doing and let us get to the house.More >>

Editors note: Last month, Adam Craven, a graphic designer for City Pages, barreled down I-55 to New Orleans in a caravan of five rented minivans. Along with a crew from his Minneapolis church, the Rock, he spent a full work week cleaning out houses in Louisiana. What he found wasn't pretty: scrap-metal vagabonds and spectral streets, hundreds of trashed Dylan CDs and a lost Purple Heart. He also found out that interior demolition in mold-infested houses is not friendly to the human respiratory tract. The labor left the Minnesotans wearing clothing that was only fit for the incinerator--and harboring a resilient sense of optimism about what might yet be salvaged from the city's ruins.

His story begins below and continues throughout the week.

More >>

When Hurricane Katrina hit on the last day of August, Diana Knoble felt compelled to take some kind of action to help the people whose lives had been turned upside down. "We were depressed and feeling guilty that all these people were suffering and our lives were totally unaffected," Knoble recalls.

The local filmmaker and a group of friends began hastily organizing a caravan to ferry supplies to the stricken area. One of their emails soliciting support for the effort happened to reach photographer Quito Ziegler in New York City. Ziegler had just finished driving a 26-foot truck emblazoned with her pictures of immigrant life in Minnesota around the state. The truck was currently sitting idle by her Minneapolis apartment. She arranged for Knoble to get a key and agreed to let her drive it to the impacted region.

Along the way Knoble and her crew picked up donated supplies from companies and individuals: 12,000 pounds of water, diapers, tampons, toilet paper, apples, squash, corn. They eventually ended up in Biloxi, Mississippi, one of the towns hit hardest by Katrina. There they set up a relief operation at Main Street Missionary Baptist Church, doling out supplies and food to people in the area.

More >>

The entire package, parts of which were published here at Blotter in the past week, is now live at citypages.com/neworleans, and my accompanying column about the fate of the Katrina diaspora is here.

Derrick Tabb, 31, stole five vehicles on the Wednesday morning after the hurricane, and transported dozens of elderly evacuees from flooded neighborhoods to the Convention Center. When it looked like no buses were coming, he coaxed reluctant family members into his stolen van and drove them to Houston, where they stayed in a church shelter for two days. A native of the Treme neighborhood, Tabb plays snare drum for the ReBirth Brass Band, the legendary New Orleans second-line group, which reunited ten days after the storm for a concert in Memphis. By the time his band mates were telling the story onstage in Minneapolis three days later, the van had become a bus, with a police escort to Houston.

A lot of my family, they didn't even want to leave. Everybody in New Orleans didn't really think it was going to hit. So I had to make them at least go to a hotel with me. It was safer than the house, and I didn't have a vehicle large enough to handle my whole family. It was my mother, my aunt, my sister, her children, my children, my wife, my mother-in-law, and a couple of grandchildren. The Baronne Plaza Hotel was almost packed, but I got three rooms. In the midst of all that, the hurricane came.

More >>

A couple of words pop up regularly in Fred Wichers's speech: "So we...." And then Wichers says what he did next in the wake of the hurricane. So we started working our way down the roads with the chain saw; so we gave out all our MREs; so we cut her driveway.

Wichers sat out Katrina in his house in Folsom, on the north shore of Lake Pontchatrain, with six dogs, his "big" son, his son's wife, and her mother. Once the storm had passed, this 48-year-old school bus driver, diesel mechanic, and handyman headed out into the wreckage and went to work.

"I don't like taking credit for nothing," Wichers told his former work colleague Frank Carter over the phone, having just risen from a well-earned nap. "I just did what my military training told me to do. I needed to help and keep things going at a fast and furious pace."

With his generator, his truck, and his chainsaw, Wichers felt prepared to cope with Katrina's aftermath. But he empathized with people who couldn't. "I was a kid when Betsy come through," he says. "I was in Gretna then. I remember standing in an ice line with my mama."

Fred Wichers: We go to bed that night and all hell breaks loose. All through the night all we did is get up and walk out and stand on the porch and watch this hurricane go by. You seen things going by you. Stuff moving. You look up at the porch and you can watch the porch go left to right, left to right. You know what I'm saying? The whole porch is shifting. The whole house is shifting.

More >>