Once the search and recovery is over, people hit by the storm are still going to need help. FEMA will pay to haul off the debris but they will only pick up from the road. If the debris is a mile it has to be moved to the curb.
Many families are going to want and NEED to pick through the debris to find things that are important to them. Quite a bit can be salvaged if people help out. The victims are overwhelmed from the start and can stay that way for weeks because of the workload, property and human losses.
If you are near where the storms hit, go help out. If you can trailer your tractor to a work site it will be very helpful. If it is only you and some hand tools, go.
I have helped clean up from Hurricane Floyd and the tornado outbreak we had last spring. For the victims, seeing total strangers appearing unexpectedly and out of nowhere is a huge help to them physically and, most importantly, mentally.
The site I worked at last year was in the middle of nowhere. There were four trailers clustered together about 1/4 mile apart. The tornado had the perfect path to take out all four. If the tornado had been a 1/4 mile to the east or west it would have miss those trailers. The tornado killed two people in those four trailers. One trailer was picked up, flown across a road, and dumped into a field. It looked like a pile of trash, not someones house.
One of the people killed was the aunt of a coworker. We went one day to help clean up. I took a long pry bar, wheel barrow, chainsaw along with other tools. These three really came in handy. Local people drove a couple tractors to the destruction and help clear out debris and move it to the road. Once we had moved stuff by hand, a JD CUT pulled out the frame of one of the trailers which then were cut up by a torch another guy had brought. You really need gloves, long pants, and boots that will stop a stepped on nail from getting to your foot. There are nails in the debris like you cannot believe. We only had one guy "hurt" which greatly surprised me and he was only scratched.
There were quite a few old guys working the site. Every little bit helped. The family wanted us to find photo albums and other things that were important to them along with cleaning up. Just wading in the mess and moving a bit of this and that was helpful. I was surprised at how much work we got done that day with maybe 10-15 people on site. There was a guy organizing things from a church in VA that was going to arrive on the weekend. The church came and REALLY helped clean up the debris that had blown into the woods and all over the fields.
I found a single photo that was from one of the trailers that was across the street. The photo was hundreds of yards from the trailer and sitting in a field. I knew the photo was not from the house we were working on so I walked over to a group working on one of the other trailers to see if they knew who the photo belong too. They got all chocked up because that photo was of a family member who was gone and this was one of the few reminders they had for that person.
The clean up will last for months. Help out when you can, if you can. The simple act of helping will be very helpful to the victims and you will be a better person for helping.
Later,
Dan
