Now I Know

I didn’t realize just how bad it was until yesterday. I watched the news coverage, I saw the photos, I read the blog posts, but I didn’t fully comprehend the devastation from the flood until I saw it in person yesterday.

As I was driving to the Bellevue Church of Christ to meet the other volunteers, I
was shocked to see the mountains of debris at the park across the street from the Steeplechase grounds at Percy Warner Park. Cindy Hall had told me about it just
a couple days ago, but I didn’t understand the degree of what it really is.

We (Katie, Marcus, Marcia, Tori and some other volunteers) were taken by bus from the church to what once was the River Plantation community. Now it’s just street after street of empty homes that have been gutted and are drying out with the help of huge fans. And more mountains of debris in every direction you look.

Our job was to move the debris from the alley behind the soaked homes to the street for pick up. It was during the shoveling and raking and wheelbarrow emptying that all this became personal to me. It’s not just saturated drywall and muddy insulation that make up these mountains of ruined stuff – it’s also shoes and toys and cookbooks and clothes with tags still attached that have never, and will never, be worn … It’s couches and chairs and mattresses and sinks … Even the remains of a piano. At one point I looked down and was standing on a huge portion of the tiled wall of a bathtub, next to the soap holder. It’s unbelievable. These people have lost EVERYTHING that they owned.

I have felt fortunate since the beginning that I made it through the flood without losing a thing. But now I feel even more fortunate to truly understand what happened to so many people, and to have been able to help even the fraction that I did.

5 Feet of Water

The news covered this area over and over again, showing the all-too-familiar brown water taking over everything in its path. The volunteer who led our team told us we'd be driving to a subdivision that will look normal at the beginning, but we'd be headed to the lowest parts of that neighborhood that received the most damage.

This was the giant crane trash picker upper that was in the neighborhood getting rid of all the flooded piles of debris. A part of my team's work was to move existing piles of said debris closer to the road so it could be picked up by the crane. Contents of debris piles: toys, shoes, clothes, food, soaked drywall and insulation, carpet, rugs, the entire contents of the first floor of every house in this neighborhood. All of the houses on this road looked like this.

This is where I spent the first part of my day. We removed all the nails and staples from the subfloor - the flooring had been pulled out already. If you look at the wall, you can see that they had 5 feet of flooding in their home. The back door had white blinds that up top looked pristine, but 5 feet up from the bottom was brown, stained from the floodwater.

As we got ready to leave, one homeowner came to us and said, "We can't thank you enough for all of your help. And if anything like this ever happens to you ... (she paused) ... don't call me." Good to know these people have been through so much but still have their sense of humor.