Down to New Orleans I went, along with thousands of other disaster relief volunteers. And yes, Rick Gordon, there were even some Canadians down there, although I think the heat almost did them in!

Volunteer work sucks because when you're doing it...you're unemployed.

Volunteer work is the greatest experience in life because when you're doing it...you're making a difference.

I've been to a lot of disaster scenes: Hurricanes Mitch and Andrew, the impoverished in Venezuela and Honduras, the Philippines, and others. I've never seen anything like the Gulf Coast after Katrina. The sheer devastation of homes and businesses was mind-boggling.

Driving down in the lower parts of New Orleans after most of the water had been pumped out, sloshing through the toxic sludge of putrid waters mixed with human and animal waste and carcasses, seeing what once were houses, and now piles of lumber and debris, the smell of rotten everything, seeing boats coming out of the sides of homes, finding cars and trucks turned upside down and on each other in people's yards, coming up on whole shopping centers and car dealerships literally covered in mud, hearing the constant wail of sirens and the overhead thumping of helicopter blades; all of this was sensory overload.

Between Hurricanes Katrina and Rita I ended up working in three different locations: New Orleans, Slidell, Louisiana, and Orange, Texas (someday I'll tell you the story of riding out Hurricane Rita in an RV). We got up at 6 in the morning and crashed at 10 or 11 at night. Did you know that you can live off of Twizzlers and water?

We tended to about 3,000 medical needs: everything from spider bites to head traumas. We gave more tetanus and hepatitis shots that I can count.

But it was the people that I met that I will keep with me forever.

Hearing the stories of families separated or even destroyed; talking to people who had no homes to go back to, no jobs to go back to, no family to go back to was nothing short of heartbreaking.

I met one family who's daughter was on her way home before the hurricane hit, but was not allowed to go into her neighborhood, so she went to the Convention Center in New Orleans. While she was there she decided to make the best of her time and help other people out. There was a mother there with some children, including a sick baby. She tried to help them out as much as possible.

At one point the mother asked her to watch the baby while she went to the bathroom, which by that point was a stairwell since there was no electricity or running water. She sat down with the baby.

Suddenly police and emergency workers came running through yelling for people to get out and get to the bridge. They specifically told her to get out immediately; that there was no time to waste.

She took the baby and figured she would meet the mother on the bridge.

While walking up to the bridge a truck came by and stopped to offer people rides. She was pushed on to the truck that was headed to Baton Rouge. No problem, she thought. She would meet up with the mother in Baton Rouge.

On the way, the baby finally fell asleep. She cradled it all the way to Baton Rouge. It was when she got to the shelter that she noticed that the baby had died.

And she had no knowledge of the mother's name or how to contact her.

These are the true stories of the devastation of the Gulf Coast. There are thousands of these stories. Peoples who have been forever changed. People who's lives will never be right again. Remember them next time you hear a plea for a donation.

And if you ever get the chance to volunteer on a disaster team, go. You will never be the same.

Dan Hurst
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