Realtors for Ventura | Oxnard | Camarillo

Leslie and I were called up mid-September to start this autumn’s hurricane season in North Carolina for about 3 weeks before being transferred to Florida for hurricane Michael in mid-October.

These are some of the things we experienced after hurricane Florence:

Common sight along country roads at the beginning of recovery.
People at a POD (Point of Distribution) – frequently held at community locations like church and other organizations.

Another country church – people waiting to register with our team.
Enough said!

A common experience immediately after a hurricane when trying to find someplace out in the country.
Flooding damaged furniture, cars, debris are a common sight.

Leftover personal stuff from a trailer in the country.
We work from sun up to sun down (7am to 7pm seven days a week for the first month or so)

Leslie and I both are Reservists in a FEMA cadre called Disaster Survivor Assistance (DSA – FEMA, like the military and all things bureaucratic, loves acronyms).  This cadre is specifically organized and tasked to meet with survivors immediately after a significant disaster. We register individuals for FEMA assistance, listen to their frequently harrowing stories of survival, and help them start back on their road to recovery.

These are some of the things I saw and experienced during my 5 months in Puerto Rico.

 Literally, our beach has hunger.  The storm knocked out all grocery stores, restaurants, power and water.

No tengo un techo – I don’t have a roof
Pero tengo vida – But I have life
Gracias Dios – Thank God
Words painted on a street.

Snapped concrete poles and downed power lines everywhere.
SOS
Necesitan agua – They need water.
Hay ancianos y ninos – There are elderly and children.

A lot of time was spent in rural communities in the mountains.
We needed 4×4 vehicles.

Hamlets scattered all over the mountains.
Many homes simply fell into the ocean from the cliffs.

After about 2+ weeks or so, some semblance of order to the city was restored.  There was still no power, but all the big hotels had permanent emergency generators and they started to “sort of” open up – officially closed, but with a “nod nod, wink wink” they’d rent a room even though there was no power to the rooms, just emergency lighting in the hallways, stairwells, etc.

I got a room in a hotel on the beach which would have been fabulous for a vacation in normal times, but it had been damaged, water had damaged the drywall in the hallways, no elevators were working, there was no service, I was simply camping out but glad to be out of the convention center.  For lighting I simply set my flashlight on end, shined it on the ceiling and it was good enough to get around.

But there was no hot water and showers were COLD! In and out fast!

This was the view from my room during daylight hours…

This was after dark…

Very eerie feeling that everything was so dark. Only emergency lighting along the strip of the hotels and restaurants trying to get back into business again.

This was the drywall outside my room – I could have pulled it off…

Leslie and I missed the cutoff for joining the Peace Corps in Guatemala this year because we were called up for a busy hurricane season.  Leslie was kept in Texas for hurricane Harvey but I was transferred to Puerto Rico immediately after Maria did significant damage to the island.

There was no power throughout the island, downed power lines and debris covered all the roads, people had lost everything. It was chaos.

For all the responders pouring into San Juan, there were no hotels or lodging of any type. The large convention center in San Juan was converted into emergency lodging (it had temp power), cots were set about 3 feet apart with men and women all together. Bathrooms were trailers at the back loading dock.  The photo is blurry because “No Photography Allowed” in the ballrooms and I snapped this surreptitiously on my phone just to show Leslie where I was staying.

On August 16th Leslie and I got the word from the Peace Corps that we’d been accepted and were going to Guatemala!  But… we knew a huge hurricane was coming up the Gulf and the next day Harvey flooded vast portions of Houston and the southern coast of Texas.

FEMA immediately called us up and we knew we’d be doing disaster relief work in Texas for a few months.  Then a month later, just 2 days before our staging in Miami, hurricane Maria devastated Puerto Rico and FEMA transferred me there a few days later.

We reached out to the Peace Corps in Guatemala to see if we could show up “late” but were told no, we’d miss too much of the initial training.   They recommended that we catch the next cycle next year.  But we’re disappointed because we’d worked so long, so hard (and spent a lot of $$!) to get to that point with the PC door closed for now.