That’s Where The Fun Is

Looking back on the past couple of posts, you’ll notice that there is some snow falling on my Washington Property. Pretty much the end of any forward progress there. At least for a wimp like myself. Once the Ohio holiday season ended, there is still several months of fun and frivolity ahead of me before the snow melts and I can get back to work cleaning out my mountainside junkyard.

As a result, I had to find something to do for a few months that didn’t suck, was at least mildly entertaining and wouldn’t break the bank.

I find myself in North Carolina’s Low Country these days. Out on the coast but not quite the beach. I am volunteering to help clean up the aftermath of Hurricane Florence. And No, It’s not court ordered. It is kind of Ironic that Hurricane Florence made me think that it was high time to get out of North Carolina and here I am cleaning up after the bitch.

I am based in Vandemere,NC a little fishing town on the Plimico Sound that opens out to the Atlantic Ocean about 20 to 30 miles to the east. The Volunteer Organization I hooked up with leased out a Baptist retreat camp during the off season. Although the Organization isn’t religious, they lease includes the rules that would make a Baptist Elder get up and dance; No Liquor, Separate Male/female dorms (even if you’re married), 10 PM Curfew, etc, etc, etc. It’s all good though, I can get to sleep by 8 and don’t have to get up in the middle of the night to get rid of that last beer that seemed like a good idea at the time.

The Organization is All Hands and Hearts. Their goal is to be a first responder and last to leave organization for natural disaster relief across the globe. They are rated pretty highly on the Charity review. 95% of their donations go directly to Disaster Response and Relief efforts. And to put a finer point, the management team salaries and expenses are paid out of a separate corporate donation fund.

On my first night here, I had to introduce myself and tell everyone how I heard about them. I was pretty confident that the introductions weren’t being used as tryouts for a segment on the Moth Radio Hour so I kept it short; I was in a Cleveland Dive bar full of ex-felons and someone told me about the group. That raised a few eye brows and now I am the most interesting man on base. The long story is similar but involved a woman on her 4^th beer and a bump who was kind enough to give me the scoop on the little neighborhood bar. The Ex-Con’s, the Pre-Cons, The committed drinkers who had been keeping the stool warm since lunch and the neighbors who just stopped in for a quick one or 3 on their way home. In short, Cleveland’s version of a Toby Keith Song.

So anyway, as my conversations generally go with women, the first 20 minutes went pretty well. I can fake being interesting for about that long. Sooner or later though, the fact that my address tends to be the nearest Walmart or 23 acres of remote mountain property without water or power and I am out of the evening’s running. It took a little longer this time as the woman was happy to do all the talking. We somehow got around to her previous career sailing boats around St Johns USVI. A hurricane had gone through and wiped it clean and folks down there were looking for volunteers to clean up and rebuild. I checked and didn’t see anything online that would work logistically, Flight costs, housing and general living conditions made an off-shore effort undoable. I checked a little closer to home and found the All Hands and Hearts Group. Free room and board, albeit simple, in exchange for general clean up and minor repairs. The opening that met my schedule was here in NC so here I am.

Our work week is Tuesday through Saturday. We load the tools into the trucks at 7:30 work until lunch and leave the site around 4pm to have the trucks at base and unloaded by 5:30. Scrub up before the 6pm daily recap meeting and dinner at 6:30. Dinner clean up and the rest of the night is ours keeping the 10pm curfew in mind. a with truck loading at 7:30 starting at A couple of blocks from base camp is a bait shop that puts up some bar stools in the evening and sells beers to anyone who stops by. Beyond that the nearest bar is 30 miles away in the nearest real town of New Bern.

Although the Hurricane was downgraded to a Category 1 storm when it arrived, it was slow moving and loaded with water. New Bern took the brunt of the rain fall. Being this is the North Carolina lowlands, all the water didn’t have anywhere to go so several feet of water from the surge and 10 inches of rain from the sky soaked everything for a couple of weeks. Driving around, there isn’t a lot of noticeable hurricane damage until you start seeing a lot of blue tarps stretched tightly on many of the roofs to block the leaks.

I’ll get an update out soon but the work is broken down into three phases:
Muck and Gut– The storm left many house under three to 4 feet of water for a couple of weeks and many homes still have the same stuff in them the day before the storm. 5 months later, mold and rot has plenty of time to set in on furniture, appliances, clothing and carpets. The walls floors and ceilings have become encrusted with mold so everything must go into a trash pile in the front yard.

 

Sanitation. Once all the moldy and rotten stuff is removed and the house has time to dry out, everything remaining needs to be scrubbed down and sprayed with mold retardant.

Rebuild. Funding is limited in NC so the last effort is limited to getting the house safe for the family to move back in. A team goes in to put up new walls, a basic kitchen, a working bathroom and privacy doors.

      

 

     

 

I have been here a couple of weeks and it has been a pretty good time. The other volunteers are pretty nice and eager to hop in where needed. I’ll put out some updates in the near future with some more details so stay tuned.

If there is enough interest, I’ll set up a fund raising page so that any donations that you might want to make come to the North Carolina efforts. Fund raising at the group’s website goes to a general fund supporting all the projects. Let me know.