A Louisiana Community Finds Help Inside the Box
5 October 2005
The risks inherent in homecomings have raised concern among environmental and community advocates who worry about the potential health effects of exposure to hazardous materials, bacteria, and mold.
Large brown boxes piled outside City Hall in Erath, Louisiana, at noon on Tuesday bore plain black-and-white labels reading "Hurricane Cleanup and Recovery Kit."
Within minutes, all 50 boxes were gone—scooped up by the storm-worn but determined residents of this small Vermilion Parish community. No amount of muck, mud, or mold was going to keep these Louisiana folks from returning to homes that Hurricane Rita had made uninhabitable.
But the risks inherent in those homecomings have raised concern among environmental and community advocates who worry about the potential health effects of exposure to hazardous materials, bacteria, and mold that Rita has left in its wake.
Tuesday, they gathered together on the steps of Erath City Hall to offer a first step toward a solution—the recovery kits—and to call for more federal action on the public health front.
"The last thing you need now is to get sick on top of all of this," Miriam Aschkenasy, an emergency medicine physician and public health consultant for Oxfam America, told the crowd that had gathered. "When we came down here and saw what was going on and people going home and cleaning up, and they're dealing with a lot of debris and a lot of sludge and a lot of silt and bad air quality, we thought, what can we do to help people return and be safe? These kits have some basic things that may help you."
The kits, which contain hazardous-material suits, masks, gloves, goggles, and cleaning supplies, are intended to minimize exposure to biological or chemical toxins while people are cleaning their homes and disposing of debris. They represent a collaboration between Oxfam America, which paid for them; two of its partners in the region, the Southern Mutual Help Association and the Louisiana Environmental Action Network; and Louisiana State Representative Sydnie Mae Durand, who spoke at the news conference at which the kits were distributed.
"These kits also come with instructions which will identify how to clean and what to look for if you get to feeling bad," Durand told the crowd. "We certainly do not want a disaster after a disaster."
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has tested for chemical and biological contaminants in soil and water mostly within New Orleans, but has conducted few tests in the rural areas to which people are now starting to return.
"They're saying the sediment is bad and we think you shouldn't touch it," Aschkenasy said before the distribution of the kits. "But they really should say the sediment is so bad we don't know what the results will be when people have long-term contact with it. Quite honestly, we have no idea what that even entails, because there is very little to tell us what is going to happen when people have long-term exposures to these kinds of levels of toxins that are now in their houses. I think this is of great concern."
Exposure to molds, bacteria, and chemicals could cause breathing problems, rashes, headaches, nausea, vomiting, and diarrhea. Children, pregnant women, and the elderly are particularly vulnerable, along with people with asthma or other respiratory conditions or whose immune systems are compromised.
Durand is calling on the Federal Emergency Management Agency or the American Red Cross to provide 500,000 of the recovery kits to people in Louisiana.
"The kits have what you need to go in and clean up your houses and be protected," said Wilma Subra, an environmental consultant who provides technical assistance to the Southern Mutual Help Association.
"If you can get your hands on more of this stuff, I recommend it," added Aschkenasy after displaying the items in the box. "It's much easier to prevent you from getting sick than to treat you once you are sick, especially when there are limited or no medical services and limited to no electricity, running water, sewage, or phone service. The key here is prevention."
That message seemed to resonate with people in the crowd, who quickly lined up to take the kits home.
"My wife, she suffers with sinus and allergies," said Willard Cole, hauling one of the heavy boxes back to his rental car. "[The flooding] made it worse. She can hardly breathe at times."
But that hasn't stopped the elderly couple--he's 73, she's 63--from tackling the task most everybody in Erath is doing these days: tearing apart their houses in the hope of saving them from the destructive mold that could condemn them to the bulldozer.
For Lorna Bourg, who directs the Southern Mutual Help Association, a recent visit to lower Vermilion Parish brought home the urgency of addressing these public health issues. Along a five-mile stretch of road she couldn't escape the strong smell of pesticides. At one location she saw large round tanks that had rolled into a swampy area. At another location she saw a woman, with her pants rolled up and shoeless, wading through floodwater.
"People are walking in and they're having contact with it," Bourg said. "No one is on site from FEMA or DEQ to put up flags." She questioned whether the state and federal governments had any plans for identifying the sites of chemical spills and for protecting people who have already returned to their communities, despite the devastation and possible contamination.
Erath City Councilman John LeBlanc estimated that, of some 1,000 houses in Erath, barely 50 of them escaped damage from Rita.
"We're picking up the pieces and moving forward," said LeBlanc. "This is a community that has a lot of faith."
And now, it has a little extra help to take those next steps toward rebuilding.
