My Week As a Hurricane Relief Volunteer
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Last September, I was feeling quite helpless seeing the devastation caused by the Atlantic hurricane season, and I was trying to find my own way to help. That month my friend had a birthday benefit, and it was there that I met Alix who works for the non-profit disaster-relief organization, All Hands & Hearts (AHAH). I was instantly captivated by how incredible and heart-wrenching her job was, having to go into a community right after a typhoon, earthquake, hurricane, or flood. You see, the way AHAH works is their rapid response team monitors natural disaster situations, then assesses if they’re needed. So, are there a lot of orgs already helping and they’d just get in the way, or is there even a place for the team to set up and receive supplies, volunteers, etc.
After mulling it over for a couple weeks, I emailed Alix saying I wanted to help. She gave me the lowdown on AHAH projects, and at the time they were just setting up in Florida, Texas had 2 programs running, and the US Virgin Islands were still in need of necessities (food, water, fuel), so she wasn’t sure when the program would kick off. She also asked me about timing, and if I would consider coming in the new year (2018). Generally, as time passes after a disaster, the volunteer inquiries start to dwindle.
That settled it for me.
I filled out my application, although I was kinda scared of the field skills section that asked if I had ever done any chainsaw work, demolition, or carpentry (does IKEA furniture assembly count?). Another couple weeks later, I was accepted into the program for St. Thomas in January 2018. The USVI doesn’t get as much news coverage, but in St. Thomas, 100% of the population was affected by the double devastation of Category 5 hurricanes, Hurricane Irma and Hurricane Maria.
The end of year flew by quickly and I started to freak out a little bit more. I did take comfort in knowing that AHAH takes care of some of the big things. There’s no charge for volunteering, they provide 3 meals a day on working days, a place to stay, and safety gear if you don’t bring any down with you (safety goggles, respirators, gloves, hard hats, etc). Thanks to my jetBlue points, my flights weren’t crazy expensive, but I did need to get some supplies like hydration tablets, a mosquito net, puncture-proof / waterproof shoes (there are a lotta nails at these sites), a twin-sized air mattress (not required, but more comfortable than just a cot), and jeans. Yep friends, I haven’t owned jeans in about 10 years. I also put out a call for help, and some incredible friends gave me / let me borrow some supplies (Beth! Molly! Gemma!).
On January 1st, I jumped on a red eye to San Juan (layover), and I landed in St. Thomas the morning of January 2nd. I grabbed my bags, stepped outside, found the taxi stand, and said, “I’m going to Holy Family Catholic Church.” Note: AHAH is not religiously affiliated. The attendant nodded before I even showed the address. I got into a taxi van by myself and turned to the driver, “Did you hear where I was going?” “Oh, I know why you’re here.” As soon as you say the church’s name at the airport, everyone knows you’re there to volunteer with All Hands & Hearts.
The driver was very friendly, but bothered that I wasn’t staying to check out the island after my volunteer assignment. At that moment, he became my tour guide and started talking about St. Thomas’ history and its people. He told me the hotels were over 2 years away from being rebuilt. And that the economy was suffering from the lack of tourism, but the cruise ships coming in were helping a bit. He shared that his job had slowed down, but he was thankful he even had a job since many of friends were still trying to find work. Not once did he mention anyone’s intention of leaving the island despite everything that’s happened. He did ask when I’d be leaving Boston because of all the “horrible winters.”
“I don’t know how I’d survive through all the snowstorms,” he said.
“Me?” My eyes grew wide. “Man, I don’t know how you survive here with all the hurricanes!”
He smiled, “This is home. This is paradise.”
We pulled up to the church and I was greeted by Jackson, who arranges the sites that AHAH volunteers go to. He walked me through the entranceway and into the main space that was filled with cots and bunk beds covered in mosquito nets. “Be careful of the little vampires,” the driver had told me.
Jackson introduced me to Adrianna, who’s the volunteer relations coordinator for AHAH. She gave me a tour of the space, and laid down some ground rules:
Lights go on at 6:30AM. Lights go off at 9PM. You can hang out after 9, but not in the sleeping area. There is a curfew because the area isn’t the safest, so the doors get locked after midnight but only on the outside. If you’re inside you can still open the doors. AHAH has hired an armed guard for outside the church during curfew hours. The base is conserving water, so people take Navy showers (under 2 minutes), and the run off water from the sinks is used to flush the toilets. The water has e.coli and is fine for bathing and cleaning, but there are jugs of water delivered for drinking and cooking. There’s laundry available on certain days of the week. Everyone gets Sunday off. Your options for breakfast are cereal or 2 eggs, toast, and a piece of fruit. The options for lunch are PB&J or some lunchmeat if you can find some. Dinners are made by a lovely cook on the island and brought to the base to eat (pasta, soup, different styles of chicken, island-style food). And there’s a mandatory meeting each night for worksite updates, housekeeping items, welcoming new volunteers, and saying goodbye to volunteers and staff leaving base.
Generally you have the first day to get acquainted with everything, but when I got in drinking water was running low, so as a precaution they had some of us newbies filter water into 5 gallon jugs just in case.
My first work day was a bit nerve-wracking. First off, while it was very much self-imposed, I felt out of place having never done this kind of work before. I would come to find out, that many people there had never done this kind of work before. Also, my contacts were acting up, so I was periodically crying from my left eye. Yeah. And I’d never worn a respirator before, so the combination of wearing it, the hot weather, and walking up and down stairs with debris really threw me off. The work also had me pretty emotional. More so than I thought I would be.
The first site belonged to a woman that had been living in a shelter since the hurricanes. Before we got there, we also found out that her husband had passed away the previous week. Generally the homeowner doesn’t have to stay while we’re doing work, but this woman was there the entire time. She watched as we took tiles, wood planks, and pieces of furniture away from this place that she had built with her partner. I couldn’t stop and talk to her without bursting into tears, but other volunteers did. She just reminded me too much of my mother. Growing up in New Jersey, Hurricane Floyd in 1999 had flooded our basement and we had lost things, but that was nothing like this. This woman had lost more than parts of a house. She had lost her home.
The next site we went to had a family in it, although it looked like they were just living in one room of the house at that point. The kids were home that day, and they stood outside as we cleared things out. There was a little girl, maybe 3 or 4, who said goodbye to almost everything she saw us take away. “Bye grandpa’s desk” … “bye frigerator” … “bye bed.”
I felt like a weak link that first day, between my leaking eye and feeling breathless between the stories and the work. But, there were volunteers like Linnette (an embassy worker in between assignments), who after knowing me for only a couple hours, offered to flush out my eye and got up real close to make sure there wasn’t anything that would cause an infection. And Jeremy (a Welshman* of many trades and serial volunteer), who kept telling me how good of a job I was doing whenever he saw me flustered. And Liz (a former cafe owner), who was chatting me up about my restaurant idea and cheering me on during breaks.
After a great brinner (aka breakfast for dinner) that night and a decent amount of sleep, I was feeling a little bit more like myself the next morning, and ready to tackle the day with less of an imposter mentality taking over my body. However I was a little bit bummed that most of my team was broken up to go to different sites, and I was nervous (see a trend?) to start from scratch with a (mostly) new group of people.
That day we went to a new site with a somewhat scary looking downed powerline in front of it. It was on top of a big hill that was difficult to drive up, so our first job was to clear out some space down towards the street so that the dumpster crews could pick up the debris. That involved Ross (an all around handyman that I referred to as Superman before he told me to stop blowing up his spot) taking a sawzall and Don (a retired tax guy) using a machete — yes, a machete — to clear away the greenery you see below.
As we cleared the pathway and started taking down debris, I saw all kinds of creepy crawlies… tarantulas, cockroaches, maggots, whateverpedes, you name it. And when we got into the house, there was still sitting water in some of the rooms. I tried to clear out a closet that had clothes and shoes emerged in bins of water. If I think about, I can still smell it even now. After that was done, I moved onto a bookcase in the room. I could tell someone in the house was sick based on different diet-based cookbooks and “how to’s.” The books were so stuck together due to water damage, it took me a few minutes before I could get them to budge. I thought I might need to take apart the bookcase itself, but on the last big pull I got a chunk of the books out and something flew onto my shoulder. It was a frog. As I took apart the rest of the bookcase, more frogs leapt out. How flooded had this room been?
By the end of the day, the greenery was trimmed back, and we were able to clear the house of mattresses, couches, and bags of household items.
The next morning I woke up feeling like I had been in St. Thomas for forever… in a good way. At that point I had worked with more than a dozen different awesome humans that I’m not sure I would have met otherwise. We supported each other, encouraged each other, and I could feel how every little bit counted each day. It’s what I’ve always felt like working in startups. It takes a village.
That day we returned to the same site and I learned how to take apart wall shelving and closets with a hammer and a ripping bar (like a crowbar). Prior to that, I had no idea what a ripping bar was, and I had mostly used hammers to… actually. I can’t remember the last time I used a hammer.
As I was taking apart the shelving in the kids room, some droplets of water from a leak in the roof fell down the back of my shirt and gave me a chill. I had been standing right where the crib used to be, and I could just imagine a kid thinking how cool an open roof was without really knowing what was happening. Thankfully because it’s so hot there and I was sweating so much, I don’t think anyone noticed the few little tear droplets that fell into my safety goggles.
At our next site, there was a multi-level shed that needed to be taken down because it was no longer safe. Also, the homeowner’s roof had flown into the backyard, and was somewhat buried with mud, downed trees, and particle board (from different pieces of furniture) that just disintegrated when you held it in your hand.
To clear a path to the shed and roof, I spent the rest of the afternoon shoveling and taking bigger pieces of debris down a hill to the front of the house where it would be picked up.
On my last volunteer day, I was paired up with Lily (a college student on break) to take apart a kitchen, see below for the before and after pictures. With the exception of the sink, where we got some help from our team leader Owen (a college student on the island), we took everything down ourselves, from the tiles to the cupboards. A couple days before, I had seen another volunteer, Karen (an IT specialist), take apart a full sized kitchen all by herself. I kept calling her Superwoman because she was so focused and such a badass while doing it, but when she would take a water break, she’d go back to her giggling, bubbly self. I remember being relieved that I didn’t have her job that day. But on my last day, I didn’t think twice about jumping in when I got assigned the kitchen.
My last night there I stayed up late talking to people, and couldn’t get much sleep once I did head to bed. I was pretty sad to leave this group of virtually ego-less, empathic humans. Volunteers from Santa Barbara to Sydney… students to retirees… working in industries like film and forestry… who have different religious and political beliefs… that all found common ground. Somehow, between our bunk beds and mosquito nets and working all day together, eating every meal together, and not having many solitary breaths, the AHAH staff and volunteers had created an incredible environment to just get stuff done. This is the kind of amazing work that complete strangers can do when everyone puts their egos aside, rolls up their sleeves, and works towards the common good.
Chrissie, the AHAH volunteer engagement coordinator, was kind enough to share some stats with me. From October to when I arrived in early January, AHAH volunteers had worked on 207 sites, including 4 schools, 2 churches, and 1 nursing home, impacting almost 4,000 people.
So now here’s where you come in. My birthday is January 31st, and all I want is for people to support All Hands & Hearts. Click below to donate and help the amazing St. Thomas community. AHAH has committed to staying for 2 years to help with relief and recovery, so every little bit helps. And if you’re unable to support the cause, I hope you can share this with some of your friends and networks to get the word out. Thank you! Oh, and if you’re interested in volunteering, please let me know. If I can do it, you can do it. 😉
*Apologies to Jeremy who I originally referred to as an Englishman.
