This past month brought the first official day of fall and we have finally started to see some cooler weather down here in the dirty south. We are about a month and a half removed from the Louisiana Floods of 2016 and media coverage has gone down dramatically. There is now little to no news coverage and the great flood has been all but forgotten. I admit that even myself began to sort of forget about the catastrophe which rocked our neighbors. The New Orleans Parish Sheriffs Office held a clothes collection for those flood victims in need so my mother and I gathered up two trash bags full of clothes for donation. I went to drop them off at the Sheriff's Office and was told that I was a week too late and they had stopped collecting clothes for the victims. The victims had been all but forgotten

In terms of my volunteer hours, I applied to be a volunteer at the Daughters of Charity. The Daughters of Charity have about 10 low cost clinics located throughout the metro New Orleans Area. However, in my quest to become a volunteer there I have encountered some sticky red tape and is taking quite a while for me to become a volunteer. I hope to be able to start my volunteer work there in early October. So long for now.

On Monday, August 29th, the city of New Orleans "celebrated" the 11th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina. The City has nearly fully recovered from the storm which devastated much of the area. Ironically, about two weeks before the anniversary of Katrina, a natural disaster took place. This time New Orleans was not the victim though. The victims were our neighbors to the west, the citizens living in Baton Rouge and the surrounding area. Dubbed the "Louisiana Flood of 2016" the torrential rain began on August 11th  and flooded the area damaging more than 150,000 homes. They were very few casualties luckily but many of the homeowners whose residences flooded did not have flood insurance. So now it is a waiting game for them as they have to sit tight and hope for money from FEMA and the government so that hey may start to rebuild.

On Saturday, August 27th, my girlfriend drove to Baton Rouge in order to help gut a house that was assigned to us by Nola Tree Project. The homeowner was a single mom and Shreveport native with no family here to support her. Her house received two feet of water so we had to take out four feet of sheetrock and drywall, as well as all of the doors, the kitchen cabinets, and bathroom vanities. Luckily for Nola Tree Project, there were 4 other volunteers that day and were we able to get most of the work done in about 7 hours. Unfortunately she did not have flood insurance but she has decided to rebuild. The Louisiana Floods of 2016 will be forever ingrained in the minds of southeastern Louisiana citizens.