Today was interesting. Beech Bend suffered from too much help and not enough help. Lower Beech Bend Drive was a zoo of volunteers, and it was all good….and chaotic. Food Tables every few blocks, people driving around asking if we wanted water, teams of people in the same T-Shirt walking around to each person asking if they can help. Robert and I walked around for hours and really only helped a few people because there was so much help that had descended on each home. The spirit was rather high and in a weird way it was exciting. Everyone coming together because everybody got wiped out, the water showed no preference. Every house looked like it threw up on the front lawn.
School buses were showing up with teams of people in the same colored T-Shirts volunteering.
ALL the yards look just like this.
The insides look like this. Take everything out, pull up the flooring and rip out the sheet rock. Then go under the house and pull out the insulation under the crawl space. Spray everything with bleach and let it dry…….then what?? Nobody has flood insurance to rebuild. These are all middle working class folks who still have a mortgage and just getting by like the rest of us. We dont live in a flood plain and nobody was told to buy flood insurance.
We tried to volunteer at this house but there were at least 10 people helping and after awhile you can have too many people overwhelming the home owner and they just shut down. This was what we found over and over again.
This garbage crane truck shows up and after two houses it is full.
Here is one of the numerous food tents that appeared. This one is from O’Charleys. Anderson Cooper broadcasted from here just the other night.
Here is another food table that appeared. People descended on the area bringing everything imaginable.
Here is a house fully gutted.
We wash the floors with bleach, pressure washed and shop vac’d all the water off.
Extreme spring cleaning. This floor was just bleached, pressure washed and vacuumed.
Here is what the Red Cross and a church group dropped off. A bucket full of cleaning supplies to the tune of at least $40 per bucket. The Red Cross box had a squeegee and mag lite….at least $50 per box of stuff, and they were just handing them out.
Here is a nice subdivision that has 24 high end condo houses. Flooded up to the doorknobs on the first floor. Total gut job for all these folks
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Here is picture of a massive neighborhood pickup that was organized by two ladies and they had a full spread of food that 100’s of people participated in….amazing.
This stack of water, canned drinks, snacks are everywhere. Groups such as the Red Cross, Churches and others are setting up food stations every few blocks. There are cases of water stacked on curbs all over the place.