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Under their own steam
Click here for photo album 5:31 p.m., April 11, 2006--For InterVarsity Christian Fellowship members Ryan Moyer and Josh Whalen, the trip began last September as a frustrated urge to help, and grew into a firm student-fueled plan by late January. “When we talked with other students, we kept hearing how much everyone wanted to help, but nothing was getting done to organize a trip down,” Whalen, a senior chemistry major from Allentown, Pa., said. A solution finally came when he contacted a friend, recent UD alumna and AmeriCorps volunteer, Laurie Cannon, (CHEP, 2004) who put him in touch with a volunteer organization in Holly Grove, La., one of the hardest-hit areas. Plans then took off quickly, with fund-raising efforts rallying a little more than $1,000 to pay for gas and a week's worth of food, and by early March, 38 students had committed to the effort. “We felt so helpless standing by watching all the destruction when we knew we could get so many people from UD involved,” Moyer, a senior education major from East Stroudsburg, Pa., said. “A few interest meetings was really all it took to get the word out about the trip, and recruiting people wasn't difficult at all.” Funded in part by donations from several local churches, the trip required each participant to come up with an additional $150 for food and transportation costs and to round up a car or two. A loaned van was secured from the United Methodist Church in Dover, a Spartan supply of cold cereal and peanut butter and jam sandwiches was packed, and plans were firmed up with Trinity Christian Community Center in Holly Grove, the group's home base for the weeklong effort. “Holly Grove had been badly neglected, so we were working on houses that hadn't been touched since the initial search and rescue mission,” Moyer said. “Mostly the work involved gutting houses--getting out the worst of the debris and hauling it into the yards for collection--but it was hard to imagine the damage we'd see before we got down there. Scraping mold from plaster with a chisel all day can get pretty tedious, but the stench was even worse. There were carpets, mattresses and sofas that had been floating in polluted water, and most of the refrigerators were still full of old food.” The group took on five houses in all, two of which were side-by-side and had at one point been under nine feet of water. Sodden debris piled up in the yards so fast, Moyer said, that trash trucks came by as often as two times a day. “The city has hired former residents just to collect all the debris,” Moyer said. “That's their entire job. But there's so much of it, there's no way to keep up.” Article by Becca Hutchinson |
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