[Rhodes22-list] Florida Disater Response Trip

[Roger Pihlaja]

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