Helping Out A Little

On Wednesday, our bishop sent around an email requesting church members to head down to New York or New Jersey for the weekend to help out people affected by Hurricane Sandy.  It's been a few weeks since the hurricane hit, but there is still a lot of need in the area.  Jason and I talked about it and, amazingly enough, we didn't have anything going on this Saturday, which is rare for us.

Well, we planned to decorate for Christmas and clean out the garage, but this seemed a little more important.

So we went down with a few other people from our ward (Mormon for congregation).  There were 7 of us from the Central Falls, RI ward, including one of my Young Women who wanted to come.  Anyone 16 or over could come and help.  I don't think she realized until the day of that she was the only person under age 22 going, but I think she's glad she went.

(As we were driving home, she told me and Jason, in kind of an amazed voice, that all of us grown ups are pretty fun.  That opinion may have been negated by the completely boring lesson I taught the Young Women this morning at church, but my scheduled teacher had a family emergency and I had an hour to prepare, so, you know, you win some, you lose some.)

We left yesterday morning at 5:30 and drove to Rockaway in Queens.  We could tell once we crossed over the bridge into Queens that something big had happened.  We started to see piles of construction debris in front of houses as we drove by, and noticed that a lot of businesses were closed.  The Mormons had a designated meeting spot, where we found the rest of our group and the 7 of us set out for our first house.

We wound up in the basement apartment of a house that had been pretty gutted already and stripped down to the aluminum framing.  I initially thought that it was the basement of someone's house until I talked with the teenage daughter who was there helping us out, and realized, when she started pointing out where their bedrooms and living room were, that it had been their apartment, not just storage for the house upstairs.  It would be bad enough to have your basement flood, but they lost absolutely everything.

As if that wasn't enough, they had just finished fixing up the entire apartment a few days before the hurricane hit.  We wound up smashing up their brand new bathroom with brand new sink and toilet and bathtub and brand new tiles because the drywall behind it all had been soaked through and had to come out.  Because of the storm surge, the apartment had been filled with 8 feet of water.  We could see a watermark way above our heads on the tile in the bathroom.

So we pulled up their tile and subfloors and we knocked down the bathroom, hauling out the debris and leaving it in a pile in front of their house like all the piles we had driven by earlier, for the city to come and collect.  We shoveled and swept and tried to leave the apartment in as good of condition as we could so that they would have a relatively clean base to start over.

The thing that blew my mind was how upbeat the family seemed.  We met mom and the teenage daughter, and then mom's brother and his son showed up to chat with us and see what we were doing.  I know they've had a few weeks to absorb this, but I don't think I would have been so easygoing about it all if I had lost everything.  Mom made hot chocolate for those who wanted it.  At the end, we took pictures, hugged each other, and we left.

We only had an hour and a half left until we were supposed to wrap up work, so we tried some of the other houses on our list, but either no one was home, or there were other groups there helping.  I think there must be a general list of homes that need help that is distributed to all the groups, so sometimes the same house winds up on more than one group's list in a day.  I was so thrilled to see how many groups there are helping. We saw lots of Mormons in our yellow vests, but also many, many other groups.  Even a group from Minnesota!  That's a long drive.

After dropping off the big tools back at HQ, we searched for a place to eat dinner, and had to drive for awhile because, of course, the storm surge flooded stores and restaurants too.  Everyone is rebuilding, but it's a slow process.  I was happy to see a few different distribution points where churches and other community groups were handing out  food and clothes to those who lost so much.  The family we helped was lucky that they have family nearby who didn't get flooded and who could take them in while they fix their place.  But I'm sure there are other people who don't have a good support system, and who are dealing with construction and lack of power all on their own.  I was happy to see that so many in and out of the community are pitching in.  It's definitely needed, especially as winter is coming.

Eventually we found a diner and ate dinner, then 3 of us drove back, while the other 4 headed to a local Mormon church building to spend the night.  Jason and I wish we could have stayed, but we had Evensong this afternoon up in Cambridge, and would have had to leave too early this morning to be of much use.

I'm so glad we went.  We played a very small role in the overall effort, but I'm glad we got to help that nice family, and I hope we eased their burden even just a tiny bit.

This is me prying up the subfloor.  I only did a small bit of the hardest labor, but I was pretty proud of this.