These are not first world problems, or, my day with Andrew and the National Guard
I know a lot of people think Irene was a whole lot of big whoop about nothing and would rather read El Bloombito (and OMG the things I could tell you about her....) but we're only just now seeing the end of the flooding here. Next comes the cleanup, and on Friday night, Andrew Cuomo announced volunteer cleanup days over Sunday and Monday of this weekend - Labor for Your Neighbor. Volunteers congregated at one of four staging areas and be taken to the towns with the worst flooding to help. I signed up for the Catskills site, so at 7.15 am this morning, I was on my way.
Here's the thing: water does not care what religion you are; if you've lived an honorable life or are a sunovabitca, it does not care if you live in a trailer or a rather nice 19th century farm house. Water only cares that it wants to be over *there,* and if you are between it and over there, well, too bad, so sad. In one trailer park we walked through some of the home were almost entirely intact, perhaps because the ones upstream had been picked up and carried downstream, slammed together to form an impromptu dam that shielded their neighbors. Everywhere you looked, you saw piles of debris. Everything tossed all over, jumbled up with clothes and tree limbs and kitchen supplies and car parts and everything covered in a thick layer of black sludge. (I have photos, but believe me, there is basically nothing less photogenic than a recovering flood zone and I'd really like to not post them because it turns out one of the less attractive things about a flood recovery effort is dealing with the creepy voyeur disaster tourists.)
It's totally overwhelming. But you throw 120 people at a problem, and you can make a pretty good dent. They split us up into teams of 8-12 people and assigned us each a National Guard leader. My team shoveled out 3 basements (yes Dad, I stayed out of the basements -I was the person loading the mud from the buckets into the wheelbarrow) and stripped out 2 first floors of all furniture, cabinets, appliances - everything covered in mold and mud and all destined for the dump.
There were frustrating moments. It turned out one of the owners was planning to get it all cleaned up, close the door, and just walk away - she was abandoning the house and not coming back, which made all the effort seem wasted. There were the inevitable hurry-up-and-wait times where we would finish up with one house and have to wait until they figured out where we were going next. There were a few houses we weren't allowed to work on because of spilled diesel fuel or fuel oil, which requires a hazmat crew. We could see the mud *right there* and the homeowner would be looking all thrilled that all these people had shown up with shovels and buckets to help, but we had to move on.
Our last stop before we had to wrap up was the town recreation field, where, I am NOT KIDDING - the briefing included the sentence "Don't worry about trying to get the picnic tables out of the trees". Because of the flood pattern, a great deal of the debris and detritus from the entire town had ended up dumped in great piles here. We spent an hour on it and barely made a dent. Here's the list of what the citizens of Arkville, NY lost, that I found, caught in the trees around the rec center:
a cooler
a massaging foot bath
a shop vac
a child's fire truck
3 right shoes (one slipper, one work boot, and one rather nice saddle shoe, all different sizes)
a tackle box
a small tool box, tools intact
a six pack of beer, one missing
assorted half full bottles of cleaning products, such as one might find under your kitchen sink
2 recycling bins
5 tires (assorted sizes)
a fabric child's doll (embroidered face, yarn hair)
4 jerry cans
some sort of large fabric thing - curtains, maybe?
There are lots of things you can do to help - United Way is taking donations, or more long term, you could book your next vacation in the Catskills (its principal industry is tourism for a *reason*, yo). But if you do nothing else, be a witness The next time you hear someone whine that Irene wasn't as big as promised, say that in Arkville, there's a little girl missing her dolly, a fisherman with no tackle, and three people trying to figure out what you do with only the left shoe. There's a wall of trailers slammed together, like so much kindling. There are houses flooded with mud mixed with diesel fuel. There are kitchens sitting on front lawns.
And then ask them again - was Irene a whole lot of fuss about nothing?
Here's the thing: water does not care what religion you are; if you've lived an honorable life or are a sunovabitca, it does not care if you live in a trailer or a rather nice 19th century farm house. Water only cares that it wants to be over *there,* and if you are between it and over there, well, too bad, so sad. In one trailer park we walked through some of the home were almost entirely intact, perhaps because the ones upstream had been picked up and carried downstream, slammed together to form an impromptu dam that shielded their neighbors. Everywhere you looked, you saw piles of debris. Everything tossed all over, jumbled up with clothes and tree limbs and kitchen supplies and car parts and everything covered in a thick layer of black sludge. (I have photos, but believe me, there is basically nothing less photogenic than a recovering flood zone and I'd really like to not post them because it turns out one of the less attractive things about a flood recovery effort is dealing with the creepy voyeur disaster tourists.)
It's totally overwhelming. But you throw 120 people at a problem, and you can make a pretty good dent. They split us up into teams of 8-12 people and assigned us each a National Guard leader. My team shoveled out 3 basements (yes Dad, I stayed out of the basements -I was the person loading the mud from the buckets into the wheelbarrow) and stripped out 2 first floors of all furniture, cabinets, appliances - everything covered in mold and mud and all destined for the dump.
There were frustrating moments. It turned out one of the owners was planning to get it all cleaned up, close the door, and just walk away - she was abandoning the house and not coming back, which made all the effort seem wasted. There were the inevitable hurry-up-and-wait times where we would finish up with one house and have to wait until they figured out where we were going next. There were a few houses we weren't allowed to work on because of spilled diesel fuel or fuel oil, which requires a hazmat crew. We could see the mud *right there* and the homeowner would be looking all thrilled that all these people had shown up with shovels and buckets to help, but we had to move on.
Our last stop before we had to wrap up was the town recreation field, where, I am NOT KIDDING - the briefing included the sentence "Don't worry about trying to get the picnic tables out of the trees". Because of the flood pattern, a great deal of the debris and detritus from the entire town had ended up dumped in great piles here. We spent an hour on it and barely made a dent. Here's the list of what the citizens of Arkville, NY lost, that I found, caught in the trees around the rec center:
a cooler
a massaging foot bath
a shop vac
a child's fire truck
3 right shoes (one slipper, one work boot, and one rather nice saddle shoe, all different sizes)
a tackle box
a small tool box, tools intact
a six pack of beer, one missing
assorted half full bottles of cleaning products, such as one might find under your kitchen sink
2 recycling bins
5 tires (assorted sizes)
a fabric child's doll (embroidered face, yarn hair)
4 jerry cans
some sort of large fabric thing - curtains, maybe?
There are lots of things you can do to help - United Way is taking donations, or more long term, you could book your next vacation in the Catskills (its principal industry is tourism for a *reason*, yo). But if you do nothing else, be a witness The next time you hear someone whine that Irene wasn't as big as promised, say that in Arkville, there's a little girl missing her dolly, a fisherman with no tackle, and three people trying to figure out what you do with only the left shoe. There's a wall of trailers slammed together, like so much kindling. There are houses flooded with mud mixed with diesel fuel. There are kitchens sitting on front lawns.
And then ask them again - was Irene a whole lot of fuss about nothing?