This means a team of volunteers, in our case about 10, work for eight hours cleaning out a home. I mean everything, furniture, dishes, clothes, wall hangings, and so on. Once cleaned out, the inside is ripped down to the studs. We worked on a ranch house a few blocks from the Emergency Communities, E.C.

The owner Cathy stopped by to thank us, and see if there was anything to salvage. Nothing. Her grandfather built the house. It was full of memories. She says that she pines away for the photos. She’s hoping we will find jewelry that was her grandmother’s.

We can only work for a few minutes at a time because of the heat. (It’s 80 degrees but with the humidity it feels more than 100 degrees. It's hotter inside the house. The windows are stuck shut) The white suits we have to wear are like wearing plastic. You instantly sweat when you put it on, and the sweat has nowhere to go.

The goggles fog up because of the special breathing mask the guys call a respirator. We all sound like Darth Vader when we talk to each other. We take turns going into the house pulling things out. Within two hours, the front lawn is piled high with what we call debris.

To Cathy, it's everything she has in the world. ``There's no happiness in pulling someone's possessions to the curb,'' says Chris, a 22-year-old volunteer from Kentucky. He's been at E.C. for a month. ``I don't know how I would feel watching someone else carrying out my stuff.''

It’s decided that it’s too hot for Mel to be suited up. She works on sorting items.

Mel and I take a break from demolition duty by driving back to camp to pick up lunches. The work continues while we are gone.

We bring back a cooler full of drinks, lunch (black bean soup, ham, vegetables with peanut sauce and cucumber salad) and snacks. I find chips, cookies, power bars and crackers and grab them. (We devour the chips.)

On the far right is Chris, 21. To Mel and me, Chris is the hardest working long-term volunteer here. Tomorrow is his birthday.

We’ve befriended Priscilla, an eighth grade teacher who works in Wellesley and lives in Lincoln, Mass. Our other friend is Dottie, an RN from Worcester. (Melanie calls us the lunch bunch. We eat all our meals together.)

At breakfast this morning, we wondered about how much good E.C. is doing here. Why are we here? It seemed to us on our first day, yesterday, that we spent an awful lot of time feeding and catering to the long-term E.C. volunteers. They are all young, unshaven and the women and men have braids. They take advantage of the ``massage’’ tent, and stay up late into the night playing on the bongos.

I’m guessing that’s the ``communities’’ in the name. They described E.C. on the Web as a ``new kind of relief.’’ To us on day one, though, it seems, that’s it’s a social experience – Woodstock of the new millennium. I start calling it E.C. nation. Mel, Dottie and Priscilla laugh, and do the same.

I was questioning if it was worth it to come here. I felt ready to go home this morning. It seemed to me that the ``Relief’’ that was needed is back at the Grecos.

I thought about a second-floor light I saw in a hard-hit neighborhood driving back to camp yesterday evening. It occurred to me that if you wanted to move back home in NOLA you had live on the second floor.

I wanted to take a picture of this lone second-floor light. I realized that it would be a photo of an illumination in a window on the top floor of a house. There’s no way to show the whole story. To do that you would need to pull back and reveal that it's the only light for blocks and blocks.

Their only neighbors are blocks away. All around them are collapsed or burnt-out buildings. I can’t imagine the isolation or living in such darkness and destruction around you.

As for our volunteering effort, this morning the picture completely changed. Mel and I got up early. (We were tempted to pull out our drums.)

When we arrived at the dining tent, there was a line around the block. There were residents, volunteer firefighters, EMTs, a group of 25 from Brooklyn and others. All ready to go. We met another family from Brookline.

While the E.C. ``community’’ was not what I expected or out of bed yet, I realized today that the E.C. Made with Love Café (aka E.C. nation) fulfills a needed role. It not only offers services to volunteers working on many different projects, but attempts to be warm (okay, totally, granola) and a home away from home.

I tell 22-year-old Chris, a member of E.C.'s elite -- or in-group -- what I think about ``E.C. nation.'' He agrees to a certain extent with me, he says. ``I wouldn't be able to come out here and work on these houses if it wasn't for the support of the volunteers back at camp,'' he says. ``I'm impressed that so many of these people put their lives on hold to come here and help out indefinitely.''

Chris is the hardest working volunteer here. He runs the ``dish pit'' (the crew that washes the dishes after each meal) during breakfast and dinner. In between, he's gutting homes.

Later at dinner, I tell Dottie, ``I feel good today. I finally did some good. I helped out.’’

She adds that she feels good about stepping outside of her comfort zone to swing a hammer and pull down sheet rock. ``It’s something I have never ever done before.’’

The same goes for me.

P.S. Our tent (actually it’s M.C.’s, thanks) receives the wireless connection. I’m sending from my tent in the center of E.C. nation.