Hurricane Isaias Cleanup Day 2

When tens of thousands of people are impacted by a hurricane, I have wondered what one crew of volunteers can achieve. Today we found out!

We didn’t move mountains, but we moved some trees! We returned to a house that we visited at the end of the previous day. The single mom’s daughter was getting married in three days. With our daughter having just got married, I cannot imagine what it would have been like if three large trees had been blown down in my yard, with one on the house! So, you can imagine the homeowner’s joy and relief when fifteen yellow shirts showed up and got to work.

The first house took most of the day. The morning temperature wasn’t too bad, but Florida’s afternoon sun was brutal with no wind. Tomorrow evening brings a cold front and some gales, so it will be cooler!

Today was a story of two trees. The Magnolia had split and half of it was lying on the house’s roof. It needed to be worked on from the roof. A large pine had lost some limbs, which took out the fence, and what remained needed to come down in a controlled way before it fell down! This involved our two climbers ascending the tree and helping clean it up before felling it. The day was made more fun as the crew members got to know each other, especially those that they had not previously deployed with.

As we drove around, we were amazed how much debris has already been cleared. One neighbor brought us freshly-baked cookies from his wife – he had put his arm in a sling after tendonitis triggered by 40 hours of chainsawing since the storm. We checked on one house, where the lady-of-the-house was about to have her first baby. Military friends had cleared a lot, and the remaining issues were far from the house and low priority. They wanted us to prioritize other houses whose needs were greater. Another house just needed our skid steer to move to the road the huge logs that they had cut. There are still hundreds more work orders, and often the homeowners are unable to help themselves, so we will continue helping one homeowner at a time.

Today, we were thankful that we all had remained safe and that we’d been able to have meaningful and helpful conversations with stressed homeowners. We were especially thankful that one of the people we helped made a profession of faith in Christ, which was our ultimate objective!

We started the day by driving 30 minutes south, returning to Gulf Breeze over a four-mile bridge.