Tag Archives: Sandy Aid

Respond & Rebuild in the News

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Roadside debris, 5 weeks in. Progress.As the weeks roll on (and we can’t believe there have only been 5 of them so far!) Respond & Rebuild has been getting some more great press. Since we last updated the site, we’ve been mentioned in an article published by Raycomm Media that reached about 40-some-odd outlets, and says great things about our early work. You can check out the article here. And if you’d like to check out the author of the piece, Ray Downs, follow him on Twitter at @RayDowns.

Occupy Sandy gets some great press here, in a video from New York’s Daily News, and Respond & Rebuild’s own Gabriel Van Houten has a quick cameo appearance in front of the YANA Community Center in Rockaway Park.

Last but not least, we got a quick shout out from this Gotham Gazette piece, which features two of our speakers from our mold education events in the Rockaways, Coney Island, and Staten Island last weekend. The four sessions we held were the first of their kind in the area, and each meeting was full of residents wondering about health effects of mold, how to get rid of it, and how to know if homes are safe. Bloomberg is under a bit of fire recently for not addressing the health risk sooner, and Respond & Rebuild is gearing up to build our capacity to address this threat to public safety. As far as we can see, Respond & Rebuild is the only group offering trusted mold remediation services for free in the Rockaways, despite the fact that many Sandy-affected families are experiencing extreme financial hardship and found themselves under-insured when Sandy hit home. Currently, we are discussing ways that we can train neighbors to train neighbors in inexpensive but reputable methods for treating mold in flooded homes, in as many affected areas of NYC as possible.

Last but certainly not least, we have some exciting projects in the works and we want you to stay updated. We know you want to be informed as we launch a full-on mold offensive! If you haven’t yet, please follow our official Facebook page and also check out our first video. (Thanks to Nick, April, and Lemia for all their help on this!) There’s more good news to come, so stay tuned.

 

A Day in the Rockaways

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So you’re looking to volunteer, huh? Well have we got an opportunity for you! Put on your dirty clothes and lets get to work in the Rockaways. We’ve been called a veritable “Volunteer Delta Force,” so lets explore why.

Days begin with a volunteer muster at our working nerve center and Tool Hub on Beach Channel drive. Just arriving here and meeting the pastor of the small warehouse-like church is a reward in itself. Pastor Dennis Locke has been an incredible partner of fortune for us, and any conversation with this master of metaphor is rife with both heartfelt wisdom and lighthearted humor. Once everyone has arrived and begun meeting one another we hold a short briefing on general safety, basic techniques, and what to expect in the community. Then our coordinators form teams of volunteers, all headed by an experienced and trained Team Leader, to be outfitted with tools and dispatched to work-sites. These sites are homes whose owners have been identified and prioritized by our crack assessment team.

Once out in the field the real work begins. Physical work on a scale that individual homeowners couldn’t really begin to approach on their own, and a subtler emotional support that is really the backbone of any community based volunteer effort. Out in the field volunteers work intimately with residents, picking through flood damaged belongings and gutting out flood damaged residences. It’s people helping people to pick up the pieces of a life, and with each person working, each couch thrown away, each wall pulled down, a little more healing, peace, friendship and light enters the world.

Our teams currently take water-logged basements and ground levels all the way from the initial untouched horror of a post flood disaster, to the clean and relatively manageable bare studs and exterior walls that is a gutted and sterilized home. To begin, we immediately remove large sources of mold and other foul substances from the home by hauling all the water-logged contents out to the curb. This also opens up workspace and airflow. Armed with hammers and crowbars and shovels and wheelbarrows our next step is to pull apart all the trim, drywall, flooring, insulation, and general building materials that got soaked by the storm surge that dark night. By exposing the bare framing of the house we let it begin to dry out naturally. Once the house is gutted, a mold team will return to physically scrape off the mold, chemically treat the bones of the house, and finally paint the same in order to seal out further potential toxic growth. From there the way forward is much more clear and bright to everyone.

The whole process is enriching for all involved. The beauty of strangers helping eachother, asking for nothing, is obvious to anyone who spends even a moment down here. At day’s end there is nothing but smiling faces and glowing anecdotes, phone numbers exchanged and hugs around. It is truly an inspiring sight that should be shared with as many people as possible. Few experiences can compare. So sign up, spread the word, and most of all - VOLUNTEER!