In the Sept.-Oct. 2005 issue of the USDA NEWS, readers learned about the extraordinary outpouring of assistance from USDA employees to other employees and civilians in the immediate aftermath of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita.

But that assistance was not short-lived. It continues today.

After he returned from a firsthand look at the devastation in October 2005, Secretary Mike Johanns offered Lt. Gen. Carl Strock, Chief, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE), additional personnel to help with its missions of debris removal, public affairs, and roof protection of damaged houses.

Coordinated out of USDA's Office of Operations, as of April 2006 over 100 USDA employees from 32 states had been deployed primarily to Louisiana, working 12-hour days, seven days a week, often thrust into jobs above their pay grades and outside any previous experience. Most wanted to do it again--and many did extend their tours beyond the initial 30 days, thanks to sympathetic supervisors.

Coping with the devastated landscape was a bigger challenge for many than being away from families and home. Hurricanes Katrina and Rita covered 87,000 square miles with debris, an area about the size of Great Britain and three times greater than the destruction left by any previous storm.

The volunteers have described their tours of duty as humbling, inspiring, meaningful, rewarding, and an honor. Yet for many that sense of contribution and pride at a job well done is tinged with dismay at leaving the work undone.

"It is the most rewarding thing I have done so far, but also the most depressing. It is when you return that it hits you," said Maria Tupac, a commodity program specialist with the Farm Service Agency's Kansas City Commodity Office in Kansas City, Mo. "When you are there you work 12-hour days, eat, and go to sleep and do it all over again. But over time, as you encounter the same devastation day after day, you begin to get used to it. Only when you are back in your usual environment does it hit you. And people don't understand what you've seen, the magnitude of it."

Tupac was a Quality Assurance (QA) Inspector for construction and demolition debris removal in the towns of Slidell and Pearl River, located in the southeast corner of Louisiana. "I drove around and made estimates of the debris and I made sure the crews were paying attention to the regulations--especially as they dealt with private property," Tupac said.

She saw dump trucks chock full of toys damaged in the storm. "All of those toys belonged to someone," she said. "There were areas in the town where you could see a neighborhood had existed. The outline of the concrete foundation was visible. But there was nothing else. The houses were gone and so were the people." Over time, truck drivers began decorating their trucks with cast-off toys, Teddy Bears, Mardi Gras beads, and Harlequin dolls. "That's how they coped," she said.

During her 30-day deployment, Tupac was housed in New Orleans, 40 minutes away. "At 6 p.m. you might be estimating debris, but you had to leave then or get lost. There were no street signs and no streetlights. The only light at night were the headlights of your car," she said.

Then there is Edgar Montalvo, who was a victim of the hurricane and a volunteer in the restoration. He is a resident of Jefferson Parish and is a computer specialist with USDA's National Finance Center (NFC). He was evacuated three times: once to Mississippi, to Texas, and finally, to California. Then, when brush fires threatened his temporary residence in Los Angeles, Montalvo decided it was time to come home.

Jefferson Parish is a narrow strip of land that runs south of New Orleans and stops at the Gulf of Mexico where the Mississippi River ends. When Montalvo returned, he found his house had been flooded with muddy water and the roof was gone. The people working the pumps on the levees were evacuated--so the parish flooded. The only communications tower came down, knocking out all communication. "So the residents wired a crane to pick up signals and it worked. People were really creative," he said.

Since the New Orleans-based NFC had relocated ahead of the storm, Montalvo's job was also gone. He lived in his car until he learned about the opportunity to volunteer for USACE.

He began work as a QA Inspector of roofing contractors in New Orleans less than a month after Hurricane Katrina hit. He checked each calculation the contractors made to insure that once the blue tarp material was cut, it would protect what was left inside salvageable homes. At that time, much of the city was deserted. "All the colors were gray. Pets were wandering around. I couldn't believe what I was seeing," he said.

Montalvo was housed in the Riverside Hilton with a view of the city. "The first week everything was dark. As time went by I could see the lights come on, signs of progress, like the city waking up, coming back to life," he said. "I felt like I was doing something really good." Later in his five-month tour of duty, he did audits for the Federal Emergency Management Agency in other parts of the state.

Dave Campion, a locksmith with OO's Facilities Management Division in Washington DC, was a QA Inspector of debris contractors in New Orleans. He made sure contractors sorted debris according to type, such as refrigerators--usually still loaded with spoiled food--other appliances with coolants, TVs, tires, and hazardous household materials.

Campion stayed for 60 days. "You'd see people putting their whole lives out on the curb, stuff they've had for generations or with sentimental value, sitting there just waiting for the debris team to scoop it up," he said. "That was a challenge at first, but you get used to it."

Getting "used to it" had a lot to do with the relentless schedule. The routine was a little like Bill Murray's character in the movie "Groundhog Day." As Campion put it, "when you get up at 4 a.m. and finish at 9 p.m., the only thing different was the traffic pattern on Saturday."

Scott Nista and Greg Stevens left their jobs as Rural Development guaranteed loan officers in the Traverse City, Mich., office for a stint of 50 and 30 days respectively. Both men worked out of the USACE Debris Mission in Jefferson Parish.

"Everything was bad. It was different degrees of bad," Nista recalled. "Where we were was not as bad as the Ninth Ward [a low-income housing area in New Orleans that was flooded, destroying houses, tossing them off their foundations] but compared to home, what we saw in terms of destruction was horrific."

"Here I look through files and do outreach," he said of his job in Michigan. "There it was nonstop morning until night, 78-hour weeks wearing a hard hat and a safety vest and manning the dumpsites."

Stevens' duty was similar but consisted of monitoring the disposal of rotten food. "I think they picked me because I'm with USDA," he said. He monitored the loads of rotten food brought to the landfill, which ranged from 15 to 40 tons a day. "The volume had to be categorized to avoid overloading the dump," he said. One ton equals 2,000 lbs.

Still he said, "It was an outstanding opportunity to pitch in. A great honor for us to go down and serve others in need." Nista was struck by the kindness of local residents. "They were so nice, so grateful. I bet I was asked out to dinner at people's homes about 300 times."

Laura Davis, a soil conservation technician with the Natural Resources Conservation Service Office in Beckley, W.Va., was assigned to a Field Office in New Orleans where she initially worked the debris mission. "This included inspecting loads as they were being gathered in the street, writing the landfill ticket, and insuring safety by USACE guidelines. I chased debris haulers for about 7 days. The haulers have to have a ticket from us before they leave the neighborhood. So as a government inspector, we were in great demand," Davis said.

Ultimately she moved to the "Leaners and Hangers" crew. Their job was to remove damaged trees from public streets and to trim hanging trees.

"The tree mission expanded to nearly 20 crews and I became the Team Leader. My telephone rang off the hook, 12 hours a day, 7 days a week. I dealt with many an irate homeowner; upset, worn-out crews; and burned-out government employees. I shut crews down when in violation and held roadside 'safety meetings' with discussions on proper flagging, steel-toed boots, hard hats, public outreach, fraud, and so on." At the end of her 60-day tour Davis said, "Our field office removed enough debris to have filled up the Superdome 12 times."

Alice Welch, Team Photography Leader with USDA's Office of Communications, worked the Public Affairs Mission, dealing with reporters and private citizens' inquiries, writing stories and taking photographs for the USACE newsletter, documenting the USACE's opening of a temporary campus for historically black college Southern University of New Orleans, organizing USACE's photographic database for archiving, and taking photographs that showed progress in affected areas.

That required a lot of time on the road. One of the people Welch met along the way was Elizabeth Narofsky, an agricultural commodity grader for the Agricultural Marketing Service based out of Richmond, Va. Narofsky served as a Debris Crew Leader for 90 days. That experience gave her a unique perspective on what made the experience as a volunteer so special to so many.

"You cannot come here and not be changed by everything you have seen, by the incredibly dedicated people you work with, and by the everyday courage of people just trying to live a normal life again," she said.

For its part, USACE is extremely grateful for USDA's contribution. "The volunteers that have come from the Department of Agriculture have been outstanding and have enabled our people to take a rest and refresh themselves," said Col. Dwight Pearson, Commander Forward, Louisiana Recovery Field Office in Baton Rouge. "This is a difficult environment to work in continually because the amount of work that needs to be done is enormous. We thank USDA for their support and hope to welcome many more volunteers in the future."