The cost of recovery

Debbie is our people person. Every trip we can count on Debbie to talk with someone new, to find out new information and to make new friends. We can also count on Debbie to do the jobs that no one else really is excited about...like crawling in the attic to put in insulation but we've already talked about that.


Debbie spent time this last trip talking with Captain John about his house and volunteers. Captain John shared that in Bay St. Louis workers were trying to stop the volunteers from helping with rebuilding process to guarantee the workers jobs. As a result people aren't getting their homes rebuilt as quickly. Seeing both sides of the coin, so to speak, it's hard to condemn the workers for wanting work and earn wages to support themselves and their families but it is also so hard to watch homeowners continue to live in trailers or Katrina Kottages when they really want to be in a house but don't have the money to pay for people to do the work.


Debbie reported that the workers are earning as much as $40 an hour, which made my jaw drop and my mind start whirling. A few weeks ago I listed some numbers of what we had spent on 6 trips and how many hours we had worked (approximately). Adding in the hours from this trip we have put in 5194 hours into the recovery efforts in Pearlington. If we were paid $40 an hour for that work it would come out to $207,760, just for labor costs. Though I don't have the exact amount we spent on this trip I estimate we have spent under $100,000 total on the trips to Pearlington.

It's easy for us to complain about having to raise money for the trips but yet when I think that our raising money to get to Pearlington is saving people in Pearlington thousands of dollars, that they don't have, and helping to get them one step closer to being in a real house, it's all worth it. Yep, fundraising is a pain and the cost of the trips seems daunting but the reality of it all is that we are helping people who need help. The cost of recovery doesn't seem so high anymore.