While many University students spent a week partying on the beach during spring break, 40 students ripped walls and floors out of houses in New Orleans to help with Hurricane Katrina relief.

A group of 25 students went to help during Christmas break, and after the trip, three students, Jennifer Wicks, Brett Mares and Jeffrey Horowitz formed a registered student organization, the Hurricane Katrina Relief team, to receive funding for another trip.

Jennifer Wicks said about 70 students applied to go on the spring break trip.

Brett Mares said they cut it down to 32 students who were officially on the trip, but eight other students came along.

“A lot of people were really interested in it as soon as we mentioned it,” he said.

Mares, senior in LAS, said the group helped families gut their houses.

“We were basically taking down walls, ceilings and floors,” he said.

David Hoffer, a senior in engineering who went on the trip, said everything except the frames of the houses had to be removed because mold grew everywhere, as the houses were flooded with between two and six feet of water.

Wicks, senior in Engineering, said the group was assigned work by the First Baptist Church of New Orleans.

The church had a free sign-up for anyone in the community who had the potential to rebuild their home, Mares said.

A typical day began at 8 a.m., when the relief team would meet at the Brantley Center, where they were staying, a former homeless shelter that now houses hurricane relief volunteers. They would drive to the church, get their work assignment, drive to the location and begin, Mares said.

The team would work all morning, and would stop for lunch at noon.

A group of older women from Oklahoma would bring lunch and anything else we needed, Wicks said. It was their way of helping, she added.

After lunch, the team would either get a new assignment or finish their morning assignment. They would end their days between 3:30 and 4:30 p.m., Mares said.

The team gutted five families’ houses in three days, Mares said. On the fourth day of working, they helped with Habitat for Humanity.

While gutting houses, the team met with three families, but some of the families had not yet returned to their homes since the hurricane.

“The parts of the city we were working in really were not livable,” Mares said.

It looked like a war zone, Hoffer said.

Helping the families with their houses also saved them thousands of dollars, Wicks said.

“Everywhere you go, people are thanking you,” she said. “They all were extremely appreciative.”

Mares said the students wanted to make contact with the people and one family really opened up to them and socialized with them. The family – Matthew, Lennie, Patrick and Caroline Ponseti – even threw a crawfish broil for them and joined them for a big dinner on the last night of the trip.

“They were really enthusiastic about us helping,” Mares said.

And they were.

Lennie Ponseti described the relief team as wonderful and incredible, and stressed her appreciation.

“I’m still overwhelmed by the whole thing,” Ponseti said in a phone interview.

She said their house, located in an area called Lakeview, was between two of the four levees that broke.

The family evacuated to Florida and returned to their home one month after the storm. About eight feet of saltwater flooded their house and did not drain out for three weeks, Ponseti said.

Everything on the first floor of their two-story house was destroyed. They were, however, able to save the furniture from the master bedroom, the only room on the second floor, she said.

The family has not yet decided whether to stay or to move, but for now, hurricane victims have to take everything out of their houses, leaving only the bare studs so everything can dry out. That way, if they decided to rebuild their homes, they could start right away.

Ponseti said her husband had gutted most of their house, and the University students helped to finish it.

She said she and her family had fun for one of the first times since the hurricane hit and the relief team lifted their spirits at the broil.

The Ponsetis made great friends and Ponseti described the students as great role models for her children.

“We just can’t thank them enough for helping us physically as well as mentally,” she said.

And there is more help to come.

Mares said students who went on the trip are already planning another one for the summer.

“Within 24 hours of us being home, people from the trip were already contacting each other to figure out how we could go back,” he said.