Ground Zero Is Everywhere

 

                      Back in August 2005 hurricane Katrina hit Louisiana.  It left the area in a trash heap with

people crying out for help.  None was prepared for such a devastation of this magnitude.  None were 

allowed to go down to help them until October 2005.   For that is when Central Church of Christ from

 Kokomo, Indiana, sent out five men to help restore the area of New Orleans.  The time spent there is

 what this story is about. 

                     Living in Kokomo, Indiana, the five men were Dean, Dick, Lynn, myself, and one other 

young man who had heard the cry from the souls in New Orleans to come help repair their land.  We 

took the trip in the church bus, and later drove moving vans.  The states we went through to reach 

Louisiana was Indiana, Illinois, Arkansas, Mississippi (where we stopped to eat), and then to Louisiana.

Our final stop was at Mandevlin, Louisiana, where we slept and took showers in a M*A*S*H* tent.

                    The folks at Tamney Oakes church of Christ fed us and told us where we needed to go.  

We made a stop at one house where we could not really help.  As I recall the inside of the house had 

been thrown out due to mold.  The outside of the house was now a trash heap the size of a mountain.

                    When we did go to New Orleans, we went across a bridge that took over an hour to cross.

We were all in yellow shirts which read "Ground Zero Is Everywhere".   Sure, enough Washinton D.C.

did not have copywrites on Ground Zero.  For everywhere you looked was devastation.

                   Once we crossed the bridge we stopped at a high school where we met a principle.  The 

principle said he did not have a home but was living out of his workplace at the high school.   I gave 

him one of the Tamney Oakes church of Christ magnets which he stuck on his desk saying they might

be of more help.  Could you imagine a catastrophe where your house was ruined, and you had to live at 

your job?

                  Then there was the mansion by the ocean side.  It was destroyed all except for the toilet.

Someone had written on the steps outside of the mansion moved to Edmond, Oklahoma.  You must 

wonder about the sanity of these people when all they had was taken away at a moment's notice.  

Only a newspaper was left at the doorstep of that mansion which no one would read.

                       Other things were done there, but my stay was short.  Even so is my memories of that 

time had we stayed longer the traumatic events would have been added to my own trauma's.  As we 

rode out into the sunset our lives had been changed, if not fractured by what we had seen.  For we had 

seen Ground Zero by God's hand, and not man's hand.

Paul D. Eccles