Retired Teacher Heads South to Help Katrina Victims

When hurricane Katrina left tens of thousands of people wondering how to get through the next day, retired Hawken math teacher Dave McCahon worried about their future. "When there was so much initial news about the devastation," he says, "I told my wife I was afraid most people would forget about the damage and the hurricane victims by end of year." McCahon didn`t forget. This January he packed up his car and headed south with one goal in mind: finding a place to help. Despite contacting FEMA and four different regional police departments, bureaucratic confusion made it difficult for him to pinpoint a specific community to visit, so McCahon opted for a different approach. Disturbed by reports of communities that remained desperate for help while national attention remained focused on New Orleans, he simply followed his map to the gulf coast of Mississippi. As McCahon hoped, his presence was welcome. "I came around a bend in Ocean Springs, Mississippi and saw 16 big tents set up," he recalls. "I just pulled in and asked if I could help." The tents were set up by the Christian Organized Relief Effort (CORE) - a relief effort that had sprung up to help salvage homes that had been badly damaged by the storm. McCahon was dubbed "Ohio Dave" and spent the next two weeks working with several groups of volunteers, in Ocean Springs and surrounding communities, stripping houses down to their skeleton and battling the black mold that remains as one of Katrina`s most damaging legacies. He describes a grueling routine of "taking out everything electrical, everything that had been touched by salt water, all of the dry wall, all of the appliances, and throwing it all away." Hopefully, McCahon says, the studs of the building would survive. "Then we`d take out all of the stud staples, since they could hold on to the mold, and we`d sterilize everything that was left by brushing on a Clorox solution." McCahon helped clean out houses that had not been touched since the hurricane, and frequently encountered home owners who found it difficult to comprehend the extent of the damage. "People living in the affected areas have no idea where to start, or if they do they don`t have the strength or the resources. CORE told us that we needed to stop working, and just talk with the owners whenever they came into a home," McCahon explains. "The residents of these towns were working together and a lot of them seemed bright and happy, but on the inside they were frustrated and frightened. These are people who have $90K left on a $150K mortgage, their homes are trashed, and they`re getting very little help from banks and insurance companies." The responses McCahon encountered from homeowners varied, but they were all positive. In one instance, a woman named Brenda walked in and exclaimed "Oh my God, smell my clean house!" In another, an 80-year old woman who had just had major surgery and was living in a trailer in front of her damaged house, began a conversation with volunteers about how to get help to her grown children in a community with no volunteer pool. A team was organized to visit, and McCahon recalls that "she was just so happy that something was getting done." Many stories remain deeply emotional for McCahon. "One story I heard second hand," he says. "People have to apply to CORE to get help; when the application is received CORE sends out a team to make sure house is rebuildable. I met a group that spent three or four days talking to a husband and wife, who finally confessed that if CORE hadn`t shown up they were considering suicide." The team was confused and said they were visiting in response to the couple`s application; it turned out the couple had never actually requested help - the team had gone to the wrong house. That story brings tears to McCahon`s eyes, but it also brings a heartrending clarity to the impact of his efforts and experience. He hopes to go back next winter during the cooler wi