Hurricane Sandy

Thankfully, Hurricane Sandy missed DC, but I had an opportunity to go to New Jersey with Mormon Helping Hands over Thanksgiving weekend to help those who had been affected by it.

The first day, we left DC at 4 in the morning and headed to Little Egg Harbor Township, NJ. Thankfully, I didn't have to drive, so I slept most of the way there. As you can see from the map, it's right on the water. Pretty much every house had a dock in the backyard, which mean that pretty much every house had a four foot wall of water plow through it.

Most of the houses had already been gutted – the streets were littered with furniture, appliances, carpet, and clothing. Some threw out literally everything they owned. Apparently the city had already hauled off several loads by then.

It was hard to find many people at home – most of the homes, we learned, were vacation homes, so the owners lived elsewhere; those whose lived there on a year-round basis were usually at a shelter.

We were able to find a few people home, though. One of the biggest problems we encountered was that everyone was hesitant to accept help. Most people told us, "there are others worse off than we are." Some were just still to shook up to even process much of anything that was going on. We found that it was better if you asked specific questions – Have you removed your carpet? Have you removed your sheetrock (up past the water line)? Do you have any roof damage? Do you need help moving furniture? Etc.

Boats and jet skis were everywhere. They just rode the tide right on in. One older gentleman we encountered showed us a jet ski (that was not his) that had parked itself neatly between the wall of his house and the fence – just over two inches between each on the sides, but neither had been scratched. "Where is my boat?" is probably pretty far down on the list of things to worry about if you lived in the area, though.

(I think this picture is actually from the group that went up to the Rockaways, NY the second day, but random boats scattered amidst debris and trash were also a common sight in Jersey.)

We spent a good chunk of that first day (the day after Thanksgiving) setting up appointments with people to come back the following day to help them rip out their wood paneling (circa 1960's) and/or drywall.

There was something quite therapeutic in tearing out an entire room of sheetrock with a hammer. Actually, a heavy crowbar was my weapon of choice.

Once the sun started going down, it got really cold fast! When it got too dark to do anything else, we headed about an hour north to a church building to sleep. We showered at the local YMCA.

The second day was much the same as the first (albeit with a much later starting time). By the end of it, we had gutted several more houses – some down to the timbers.

Here's the pile of everything we removed from the house above.

The last house we worked on was considerably newer than most of the others we had encountered and considerably harder to gut. We had all the sheetrock out in a matter of hours. The owners repeatedly expressed their thanks and mentioned that we had put them several weeks ahead of schedule.

It was a very humbling experience and made me want to never own beachfront property.