New Orleans volunteers bring knowledge, compassion to Iowa victims

Standing near a mound of rotting floorboards and door frames outside his home near the Cedar River, Steve Aldrich shouted to the volunteers who had driven 1,000 miles to muck out his finished basement and carve 4 feet of soaked drywall from the walls of the first floor.

"I love you guys, thank you so much," he said as he headed off to the city planning department of the Midwestern university town, hoping to learn whether he would have to raise his house a foot above the 100-year flood plain in order to rebuild.

"I'll be back in an hour to scrub more mold," Aldrich said.

But before the retired father of four could make it to his car, one of the helpers spoke up.

"Wait, what are you going to do?" the man asked.

Aldrich, one of thousands affected by river flooding June 11, said he spent days alone in his basement, using a brush to scrub away black mold and then dousing the plaster walls with potent Lysol. He had made three passes so far.

"Man, you don't have to do that," said Sidney Gonzales, an electrician whose home in Kenner took on 3 feet of water during Hurricane Katrina. "You get a spray and put it in a pressure washer. It's a solution. They sell it at the hardware store. I used it when I did my house."

Gonzales, 62, came to Cedar Falls with a group from The Vineyard Church to repay the generosity of volunteers from the same Christian community's Boise, Idaho, congregation who helped him gut his house in the fall of 2005.

"You're here," Gonzales said of his mission, "because your heart said: Follow me here."

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