erikturner

Since the damage in south florida from Wilma was much less than the damage still existing in southern Mississippi, my thoughts began turning back to MS.

Kathryn and Christine (from Trip One) wrote me an email to let me know that they were going back on Nov 16-23 and would I like to join them. Because of my work schedule, I couldn't go that weekend but still wanted to go over Thanksgiving. They sent me a link to a group that is in Bay St Louis (just east of Waveland) and is still providing help to people in that area and needs volunteers.

I was reading about the relief effort and the people in the Bay St Louis area when I had the idea of cooking Thanksgiving dinner for a group of people there. I called the leader of the relief effort and she thought it would be very well received so I called my mom in St Louis, MO to see if she would be interested in joining me to help with the meal preparation.

She was very enthused and started making plans to do this meal - she is about 12 hours away from Bay St Louis so the logistics are a little unusual. But, as of now, it looks like I'll be in MS for Thanksgiving cooking a large meal with whoever wants to join me.

Interestingly, I got a call today from Theresa (also from Trip One) and she was looking to carpool to southern MS over Thanksgiving since her car was not working. It sounds like she is very interested in going to MS to help with the group dinner.

Now, the previous day we had gotten up around 6:30 am but on this day we slept in until around 8:00 am and there was an extra Daylight Saving Time hour in there also. So I think that it's safe to say, we were exhausted.

We had talked the night before about going to a church service at the St Andrews but the service was at 11:00 am so we weren't sure whether we would do the service or do hurricane relief. Since we were moving pretty slowly in the morning, we decided to relax and attend the 11:00 service. Tomas brought over some cuban coffee which was really good.

We attended the service (I was looking a little scruffy since I hadn't even packed a razor or any nice clothes) and then we started doing tree work for the Manse. There were a couple of trees down and lots of fallen branches which we cleaned up. At this point, it was around 2:00 pm and we could have started on another work order but Keith decided that we should probably head back home if we were to get back at a reasonable hour.

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We started this day finishing up the enormous ficus tree at the Intervention Center. Our group had it down to a science and it took us about 2 hours to finish up the tree.

The next job was a quite a ways from where we were located so we headed out. We were to remove two trees that had fallen on the house and put on a tarp if there was any damage to the roof. The lady that lived there was named Rosa and she was a very nice lady. She had no power expect for 4 hours a day when the family across the street would start their generator and let Rosa run her fridge.

Once we got there and got started, she worked right alongside us moving the trimmed branches to the curb. She also insisted on giving us chilled, bottled water from her fridge even though we had water of our own.

It took the four of us (five if you count Rosa) about four hours to chop this tree up and move it to the curb - I had thought it would take much longer. At this point, we were completely exhausted but we still had another job to perform - a Haitian church in the North Miami area.

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Hurricane Wilma hit southwest Florida on Monday, Oct 24 and raced across the state to hit the Palm Beach area. Since my kids live in this area, I was watching the storm carefully. After the storm had passed and many people were left without power, the Covenant Presbyterian church in Palm Bay started planning another trip to do hurricane relief.

On Thursday (Oct 28th), I got an email from the church saying "we're going". The group would initially consist of 4 people; Keith, Kevin, Bill and myself. I had already also agreed to take some food and water down to a Methodist church in the Palm Beach area so we agreed to stop there first, drop the supplies and continue on to Hollywood, FL.

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I had to get up REALLY early this time since we were going to leave for Melbourne, FL around 6:00 am.

The volunteers that were at the church cooking breakfast for the work crews (normally at 7:00 am) had breakfast ready for us at 5:30 am and had made up a sack lunch for each of us for the trip back. This was service above and beyond the call of duty; if any of the volunteers are reading this, I want you to know that it was greatly appreciated.

The trip back was much more subdued that the trip out (I'm thinking that maybe everyone was a little tired). I had Jason, Kevin and Jessica in the truck and we got back to the church in Palm Bay about 6:00 pm. I ended up taking George home since he lives pretty close to where I live.

I don't think that I will be going back on the next available 3-day weekend (Oct 28-31) but I will most definitely be heading back soon to help with rebuilding.

As usual, I got up early and headed to Biloxi to meet with our group.

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I finally got a chance to sleep late while I was in Mississippi; I didn't get up until 8:00 am. The volunteer work crews weren't going out until after church service and lunch at the church in Biloxi so I had breakfast with the Dixon's and was able to hang out with them and talk.

Ruthy Dixon was going to Hattiesburg to drop off supplies to some of her relatives that lived in Magnolia. They hadn't received any aid and once they found out that Ruthy was doing relief work on behalf of the St James church, they told Ruthy that they could use some things (diapers, formula, canned food, etc).

I had talked to April Smith of the New Light Baptist church in Vancleave when I first arrived and there were two times that she would be at the church during the weekend. Sunday morning around 10:45 was one of those times so I planned to meet with her then to drop off the PC, set it up and make sure it was working correctly.

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I got up before the Dixon's and headed to Biloxi to do breakfast and head out to work (doing tarps and trees was what we were set up for). I got to the First Presbyterian church and met up with my group - that was when I found out that they only had cold showers (of course, at the Dixon's five star resort :o), I had a bed, hot showers and cable tv).

Our first job was in an older section of Biloxi just north of the Beau Rivage casino. It was a tin roof house and we were going to tarp it. With only a few people on the roof, the rest of us started cleaning up the outside of the house. There was some chainsaw work and lots of moving debris to the street.

The next house that we went to was in a nicer neighborhood named Porteux Bay and we were going to tarp the roof. When we got there, it was obvious that the entire neighborhood had flooded (past the first story ceiling in most houses) and all the interior stuff had to be removed. A work crew from the Biloxi First Presbyterian church had already removed all the drywall, etc. so those of us who were not on the roof, worked on the interior removing drywall nails. The owner of the house (Kimi Tran) went out and bought us pizza which was very nice.

We moved on to the next job - removing two trees from the backyard of a house in a nicer neighborhood (neither tree threatened his house). The house had been flooded, completely gutted and the owner was living in a travel trailer in his driveway. These trees were very time-consuming to remove and we actually used the truck to drag the remnants of the larger tree to the road.

The final job was in Gulfport, removing a fallen tree from the parking lot of an apartment building. By this point, we were experts in tree removal so this tree went pretty quickly and we headed back to Biloxi for dinner.

After dinner, I headed back to Gulfport to hang out with the Dixon's. I missed it but apparently, Gaston built a fire in a wheelbarrow and this caused the tire to blow out and started a small brush fire. I'm sure that those that were there can fill in the details for me.


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I got up at 2:00 am and finished packing my truck with a PC/Printer for the New Light Baptist church and a few other donated goods. I couldn't put too much in the truck since I was carrying either 3 or 4 other people with their clothes and camping gear.

I arrived at the Covenant Presbyterian church about 4:30 am but not everyone was there yet. Once they showed up, we packed up the trucks with all the gear and people and headed out. I had Gaston, Kevin and Jessica in my truck and the other truck had Michelle, Angela, George, Jason and Ted. We actually got on the highway before 6:00 am - I was very impressed.

Once again, the drive was long and boring (although, with this crew, there was a lot of truck-to-truck reparte over the short range radios) and we arrived in the Biloxi area about 4:00 pm local time.

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I had lunch with Gaston on Monday and we worked out some of the details for the trip (how many people in the truck, sleeping arrangements, what time to show up at the church, etc).

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