6:30 (Doug) Apart from the alligators in the front yard, the McVeay’s house could have easily been mistaken for a house of one of Grace’s family.
But maybe we should start at the beginning of the day. Here at the Camp Victor “Resort” (where they provide the beds, 3 meals a day and daily “activities”) the lights come on promptly at 6. I was awoken from a deep blissful sleep (provided in part by the fact that it was 4am PDT and partly that I didn’t sleep a wink the night before due to my late night/early morning before we left). I couldn’t hide from the light more than 15 minutes before I got up, grabbed breakfast and made lunch.
At 8, all of the parties met in the dining hall to choose jobs. We sat sheepishly as the call went out for framers, trim carpenters and plumbers. We finally were assigned a job working for the McVeay’s. They had some repairs to the walls to their house which needed painting. We grabbed a few supplies and headed about 5 minutes east.
The McVeay’s house was a large rambler with a high roof set back from the road. All of the doors and windows were open, and the ground around the house was bare and muddy. In front of the house there was a large pond with reeds and tall grass surrounding it.
The inside of the house was completely empty, except for the painting supplies on the bare floor. Talking to Millie McVeay, she said that her house (at 14’ above sea level) had 7’ of water in it (up to about the eaves). I didn’t get the whole story, but apparently her husband grabbed their dog (a miniature Doberman) and they headed for the attic of the garage.
The walls had one layer of paint and parts of the house had piles of garbage in it. We cleared out the garbage in the morning and started prepping the walls for paint and painting the ceiling in the afternoon. While we did all of this work, I didn’t expect that one of our main jobs was to simply talk to her about her life and hear her story.
I would guess that Millie and her husband, Walter, are in their 70’s and Walter, had four or five hip surgeries as he battled back and hip pain. In the midst of this, he developed a severe infection in his leg that spread to his hip and other leg. Because of this infection, he is limited to a wheelchair.
Oh-- and the alligator? Well, they have a couple of alligators. The one I saw was about 5 feet long and neither of them were very threatening. They stayed in the pond the whole time. Millie says that although the alligators ate all of their catfish and ducks, they don't venture onto dry land (except they helped themselves to the food from the overturned fridge after Katrina).
After we got back to the barracks, I took a nice warm shower (the barracks are probably 75 degrees but it feels very cold compared to the outside temp. After dinner, we visited US 90. That was the bridge that you may have seen on TV—the deck of the bridge was lifted off of the supporting piers and thrown sideways.
Afterwards, we watched a documentary showing the destruction of south Mississippi. It was an incredible look at the massive destruction that was largely overlooked with the New Orleans area. One of the most frustrating things was how the insurance companies called the damage from the storm surge (caused by the sea rising a whopping 23’+) damage from flood (not covered, of course). Many of the residences were outside of flood zones and were not eligible for flood insurance. The McVeays fell inside that and they are waiting for a ruling with their class action suit against their insurance company.
It’s been a long day and we’re heading off to meet and talk about what we’ll do for the next few days.
If there is one thing that I’ve learned is that it could be any of us to experience this. What would happen to me if my house was completely destroyed and no insurance helps me? Would I survive with the kind of resilience I see?
