The last time I posted I was about to leave for Guntersville, Alabama to participate in CAP's disaster relief efforts there. I along with a large group of volunteers served the residents of the Marshall County area for a period of about a week and a half. Disaster relief is completely draining work. You work about ten hours a day, every day except Sunday which you get the morning off to attend church and rest before you go out in the afternoon. A large part of what we did while we were down there was tree removal from homes and yards and some crews also tarped roofs.
Tree removal means a lot, lot, lot of chain sawing and hauling brush. The first day we were there we worked with an older couple who had upwards of twenty trees down in their yard. I was running one of the saws and had on all my safety gear and my hair tied up in a bun under my hard hat (I learned my lesson from the Dremel Incident). I stopped for a minute to take a break and get some water which required me to remove my hard hat and face shield. I turned to talk to one of the girls hauling brush and was interrupted by one of the older male volunteers, Charlie, exclaiming in disbelief, "You're a girl!" To which I replied with a laugh, "Yes. Yes, I am a girl." Charlie quickly recovered with, "I just mean you really know how to run that chain saw". I reassured him that I took the comment as a compliment and not an insult. As a side note, I was not the only woman this happened to during our time in Alabama. The same thing happened to someone else and after the man got over his original shock he proceeded to ask her where she was from. When she told him Kentucky, he said, "Thats where that other woman with the chainsaw was from. Man, I know where I'm getting my next wife from!" Apparently, I am a hot commodity. Who knew? |
| Beast Mode |
One of the big projects we worked on during our time there was a community of about seven families that had been almost completely devestated by the tornadoes. There was only two or three trailers still standing and none of them were unharmed. Those whose homes were gone were living in donated campers as they worked on clean-up and the eventual rebuilding process. I worked on a home that had been completely destroyed by the tornado; all that was left was a pile of rubble. The man who owned it had built the home by himself from trees he had cut down from the surrounding area. He had moved to Alabama after losing everything he owned in Katrina, and now is being forced to once again start from nothing. His son and two grandchildren had been in the home when the tornado hit and only by some miracle they had managed to crawl out of a space no bigger than a wheelbarrow after the storm subsided. All we could do for him was help him sort through the rubble for personal momentoes and any tools that were still useable and remove any metal or wire that he could sell at a scrap yard. The rest we piled up by hand and with the help of a bulldozer so that he could burn it in order to clear the space to rebuild. Despite the utter devestation around them, these families still had hope and were more than kind to us. During lunch one day, a group of us were searching for shade to sit in to have a break from the scorching 90 plus degree weather. Shade is especially difficult to find when all the trees in an area have been torn out of the ground so the task was proving more difficult than one would anticipate. We noticed a spot under one of the homeowner's camper and wandered over to ask if it would be all right for us to sit there. The lady reassured us that we could while saying, "Shade is the least I can do for you".Although relief work is completely draining, it is moments like that which make it completely worthwhile. I have still not completely recovered from my time in Alabama as I have been going non-stop since then, but I would do it again in a heart beat.
The only thing I would change was the flat tire we got on the way to Alabama. I wish I was joking. And unfortunately I could not even showcase my tire-changing abilities as the truck we had borrowed was lacking a tire iron. Such is my life.
