[Rhodes22-list] Florida Disater Response Trip

[Julie Thorndycraft]

Roger,
Thank you for your report from Florida. I feel very guilty at the moment as 
I will be heading to Punta Gorda over Christmas, but it will a week spent 
sailing rather than assisting - unless you consider putting tourist dollars 
back into their economy 'assisting'. We had been planning the trip prior to 
the hurricane and when we learned that all of the charter operation boats 
came through with little damage, we decided not to cancel. Last time I saw 
damage from a hurricane was in St. Croix after Hugo blasted through. Pretty 
amazing power.
Julie

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Roger Pihlaja" <cen09402 at centurytel.net>
To: "The Rhodes 22 mail list" <rhodes22-list at rhodes22.org>
Sent: Sunday, October 24, 2004 11:06 PM
Subject: [Rhodes22-list] Florida Disater Response Trip


Hi Everybody,

I'm back from Florida.  We left about 11:30 AM on Friday, straight thru with 
7 drivers taking turns, and got home about 2:30 PM on Saturday.  That's 
about 27 hours of driving &/or riding in a vehicle except for pit stops!

As you know, my group was working in the Port Charlotte/Punta Gorda, FL 
area, which is on the Gulf coast, about 1/3 of the way up the Florida 
peninsula.  Hurricane Charlie made landfall in the Port Charlotte/Punta 
Gorda area.  We also spent two days working in the Arcadia, FL area, which 
is an agricultural town about 25 miles inland from Port Charlotte, FL. 
Considering we were there nearly 3 months after hurricane Charlie, the 
amount of remaining damage is just heart breaking!  The waiting time to get 
a new roof is something like 6 - 8 months.  Most damaged roofs have blue 
poly tarps nailed on them to at least semi waterproof them until something 
more permanent can be done.

After 27-1/2 hours of driving, we arrived at Peace Lutheran Church (PLC) in 
Port Charlotte, FL on Saturday afternoon, 10/16/2004.  After we got unpacked 
& had a chance to take a shower, Jean Etsinger, the regional coordinator for 
Florida Lutheran Disaster Response, gave us a safety briefing, had us sign 
personal injury liability waiver forms, & gave us a list of jobs.  We had 
the rest of Saturday evening off to relax & recover from the long drive down 
from Michigan.  After dinner, we drove around the area a little bit just to 
see what things looked like & get familiar with the lay of the land.  It's 
somewhat hard to find your way around because a lot of the street signs were 
destroyed & have not been replaced yet.  A lot of businesses had their signs 
destroyed as well.  All 7 of us slept on the floor of the PLC nursery, a 
room about 15 ft. X 25 ft.  Some of the crew brought cots; but, I just had 
my sleeping bag & air mattress.

We attended early worship service at PLC on Sunday morning.  After church, 
we went to a trailer park to help a member of the PLC congregation move some 
of his stuff from his mobile home into storage.  The guy we helped was a 
retired elderly gentleman who lived there with his wife.  He was a diabetic, 
had just had foot surgery, and he was only getting around on crutches or a 
wheelchair.  His trailer was slated for complete demolition.  Hurricane 
Charlie had only left two exterior walls standing anyway!  The only large 
items we were able to salvage were a hot tub & a central A/C unit.  The 
trailer park looked like an aluminum & plywood wasteland.  Probably 80% - 
90% of the trailers will have to be demolished in that trailer park and 
there were lots of other trailer parks in similar condition.

After the trailer park, we went to the home of an elderly woman with 
fibro-mialga, also quite helpless.  This was the only indoor job we had all 
week.  Hurricane Charlie had damaged her roof & she had water damage.  Her 
carpeting was slated for replacement.  We removed all the 1/4 round 
baseboard moldings in order to get ready for the carpet installation crew. 
Behind some of the baseboards, we found mold & mildew growing.  So, we 
disinfected the walls behind the baseboard moldings where ever we found mold 
growing.  A couple of us also crawled up into the attic to inspect the 
insulation & HVAC ductwork for water damage & mold.  It was REALLY hot up 
there.  Fortunately, we didn't find any mold in the attic.  But, we did have 
to reattach some of the fiberglass insulation around her HVAC ductwork using 
duck tape.

On Monday and Tuesday, we worked to clear approximately 2 acres of land 
behind the Pilgrim United Church of Christ (PUCC).  The PUCC was installing 
a couple of mobile homes on that land in order that future disaster recovery 
crews will have a place to stay while they are in the area.  The land we 
cleared was heavily brushy and wooded and there were a lot of storm damaged 
trees as well as living trees that all had to come out.  All 7 of our crew 
worked at this site all day on Monday.  On Tuesday, we split up into two 
crews.  Three of us, including me, went back to the PUCC site to finish 
clearing the land.  The other four members of our crew handled a couple of 
other smaller jobs in the Port Charlotte/Punta Gorda, FL area.

The area of Florida we were working in had 3 common species of large trees; 
southern pine, live oak, and various varieties of palm trees.  The most 
common hurricane failure mode for the southern pines was snapping off the 
trunk about 10-20 ft. above the ground.  If the top half of the tree broke 
off cleanly; then, neither the remaining tall stump or the top half with all 
of the needles was any problem to cut up with a chain saw into manageable 
pieces.  However, often the top half of the tree did not snap off cleanly. 
Instead, frequently the top half only failed thru about 70% - 80% of the 
diameter of the trunk and the top half folded over on top of the stump. 
This left a damaged, unbalanced, potentially very dangerous tree to cut 
down, with a large heavy mass hanging by a thread directly overhead while 
you were working on the trunk.  The live oaks have a very extensive, 
"bushy", branch system and can grow to be very old & massive trees.  In the 
sandy Florida soil, the live oaks tended to be uprooted and ended up blown 
over with a large unstable "root ball" of soil & roots.  The problem with 
this scenario was the weight of the tree was now at least partially 
supported by the branches.  Cutting up such a tree was like playing a real 
life, potentially dangerous, game of "Jenga".  You had to guess which 
branches could be safely cut away without causing the rest of the tree to 
collapse to the ground, with you trapped in the midst of the branch 
structure!  Just like in the game of Jenga, the 1st several cuts were 
obvious and easy.  The safest strategy was to cut away as much of the mass 
of the tree as well as remove as many of the entangling branches before 
cutting any of the branches that might be supporting any load.  Finally, you 
got down to the "interesting" part and started cutting away the supporting 
branches from the top of the tree and worked your way progressively down to 
the base.  You always wanted to be certain to have an escape route in case 
the tree started to shift or roll over as the branch you were cutting 
started to fail.  Eventually, the trunk fell to the ground and removal of 
the rest of the tree was fairly straightforward.  The palm trees tended to 
get uprooted.  However, they didn't have the extensive branching structure 
of the live oaks and were not as big a problem to remove.  The most 
dangerous situations occurred when any of the above scenarios occurred in 
close proximity to other trees.  Safely untangling two or more storm 
damaged, entangled trees is truly frightening, especially after the trees 
had been left to dry out and rot in the hot Florida sun for nearly 3 months! 
In the lumbering industry, situations such as the above are collectively 
known as "widowmakers" and are a major reason why lumberjack is considered 
one of the most dangerous professions.  Every time I started working on one 
of these widowmakers, I would pray, "Oh God, please let everything go 
properly with this one!  Please don't let any of us get hurt!"  and I would 
say a little prayer of thanksgiving after every one.  I haven't been so 
consistently frightened while working on anything for a long time!  It 
definitely tends to keep you focused.  I'm pleased to report that, other 
than minor scrapes & bruises and some insect bites, nobody in our crew 
sustained any injuries.  The other type of wood that I got a lot of 
experience cutting up was bamboo, which grows like a weed in Florida. 
Bamboo wood is very tough and fibrous and the hollow stalks are frequently 
full of water.  I've never cut anything with a chain saw that tended to bind 
the blade & cause the saw to kick back as fiercely as bamboo.  You had 
really hang on to the chain saw, lest it kick back into your face!  The 
chain flung the dirty water all over when it cut into the interior cavity of 
the bamboo stalks.  I'm trying not to think about what might have been in 
that water and I tried very hard not to inhale or swallow any!  All this 
made cutting bamboo stalks very tiring work and hard on the chain saw as 
well.

On Wednesday and Thursday, we drove about 25 miles inland to the town of 
Arcadia, FL.  This agricultural community is home to a large population of 
migrant farm workers and the standard of construction was not as high as in 
the more affluent communities down on the Gulf coast.  Despite being well 
inland, the level of destruction from hurricane Charlie was incredible, even 
nearly 3 months after the event!  Disaster relief in this area was being 
coordinated by the Methodist Church in Arcadia, FL.  Our crew would receive 
our assignments in the morning at the Arcardia Methodist Church.  We would 
work all morning and go back to the church between 12:00 - 1:00 PM for 
lunch.  After lunch, we would get our afternoon work assignments, work all 
afternoon, and report back around 5:00 PM to update the church staff on the 
day's progress.  On both days, we split up into 2 crews in order to 
accomplish more projects within the limited time.  At the Arcadia Methodist 
Church, we encountered many other groups of hurricane relief workers.  Some 
of these groups looked very neat and spiffy with matching T-shirts and 
driving in big church vans or even buses.  Dressed in our grubby work 
clothes, we felt like the hillbillies from "up north".  The weird thing was 
that, somehow, these folks managed to stay very neat and clean.  By lunch 
time, I would come back to the Arcadia Methodist Church covered in pine sap, 
oily wood chips, and smelling of sweat & 2-cycle exhaust smoke and these 
folks all looked neat and fresh as daisies!  I don't know what kind of 
disaster response they were doing.  But, if I ever do this again; then, I 
want to be a member of that kind of "work" party!

On Friday morning, we did the tourist thing and drove around the Port 
Charlotte/Punta Gorda, FL area taking pictures.  Then, it was time to hit 
the road for the long drive home.

The weather was pretty cooperative, mostly sunny every day with afternoon 
temperatures in the mid to upper 80's deg F.  We had a couple of brief 
afternoon rain showers, which didn't have much effect on the temperature; 
but, did make the humidity soar.  The Florida sun was fierce & I used lots 
of SPF 40 sunblock.  Despite being a Yankee, I found I could function in the 
heat and humidity as long as I was careful to keep myself well-hydrated.  I 
probably needed about 16 oz of water per hour spent outside working in these 
conditions.  Of course, we were doing heavy work clearing land.  Other, less 
strenuous projects might not require as much water.  The only insects we ran 
into were fire ants; but, they were just about everywhere.  I wore long 
pants, steel toed work boots, used lots of insect repellent, and watched 
where I stepped.  I didn't get stung; but, other members of our crew took 
several bites.  I was expecting lots more spiders, mosquitoes, and other 
biting insects; but, they weren't much of a problem.  Despite canals 
everywhere that looked like perfect alligator habitat, we didn't see any. 
We did see some snakes & it's good to wear long pants and HD boots.  The 
root balls of uprooted trees were home to a wide variety of critters, which 
usually scattered as soon as the chain saw started up.

Well, that's what my week in Florida was like.

Roger Pihlaja
S/V Dynamic Equilibrium






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