As Amani said "the disaster is not over"...

Saturday was powerful and sobering. Three of us drove south to lend a hand, get dirty and help in any way we could. We arrived at the United Way volunteer shelter and asked for a project. We were assigned to pull out flood damaged insulation from under a house. We drove off. Laughing and joking about the burn had been most of the conversation, things felt light hearted and nice, until the moment we pulled into the damaged neigborhood. The laugher stopped as if on queue. It was strange, powerful and sobering.

Everywhere you looked were piles of peoples lives soaked from the floods, and the still falling rains. TV's, drywall, clothes, toys and furniture. All piled high, All trash for who knows what creepy crawly bacteria had floated in on the flood waters. I really was speechless. I was also deeply thankful at that moment for my high and dry condo on top of a hill. Grateful even seems to soft of a word right now.

 The first assignment was a bust. No one home. So we headed back, got a new assignment and off we went again. The house was a little blue rambler. Tired is the way I would describe it. We met the family. An older couple with not much to their name and a house soaked and starting to smell of mildew. The couple had 14-18 inches of standing water in their home for 3 days. the bottom 24 inches of drywall had to come out. A pretty tough project for an older gent with back probloms. 

We set to work; simple work really, but heavy on the back. Draw a line 24 inches above the floor, cut and pull out the old drywall. As we worked we got to know the couple, and the story was heart breaking. Not only was their home unlivable, insurance was not considering this a catastrophic event, meaning they were not going to help recover the home. FEM, designated to help people in this very boat had been of very little help. As if to add insult to injury the FEMA rep told our couple that even with three days there would be no water in the walls so the damage was not that bad!

Well as any of us can attest there was water in the walls! There was places where I would pull out sheet rock and watch the water dripping down the frame of the house, little rivers of flood water, a perfect reminder of mother natures fury. Other times I would pull out a piece of sheet rock and litteraly have water running over my fingers, every time this happened my little devil voice in my head would yell "FUCK YOU FEMA". 

 We left our numbers with the couple, told them we would be willing to back him up if he called FEMA. It felt like so little, I wanted to do more, but what can I do? After all was said and done, we managed to get the sheet rock out of the living room and one bedroom. We were filthy tired but happy to do what we could. 

 There is so much to be done, so many families entire lives destroyed, the reality is it will be years before this little community does not have terrible flashbacks everytime the rains come hard.