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10/11/2005: "Cleanup: Day Two"
Day two sucked. That pretty much sums it up.
We got up early (staying with friends whose house wasn't badly damaged) and headed for the house. On the way, we saw that the National Guard had set up at the local airport, and everwhere we looked, their trucks patrolled the roads. I'm used to seeing things like that on military bases, but to have your town overrun by the military was very surreal.
We stopped at the fire department just down the road from our house to pick up food, water, and ice. The Salvation Army had dropped off piles and piles of clothes, so we found a few t-shirts and socks to get us through the next few days.
Here's a shot of the National Guard truck delivering supplies to the fire station, which took costly damage of its own; three of the four trucks were totalled by storm surge--two of them were brand new and had never gone on a run.
This is a picture of the damage directly across from the fire department.
And another.
We got to our house a few minutes later, and since the temperatures were still cool (in the eighties,) I used the opportunity to walk around the neighborhood and collect our belongings that had washed out of the house. Everything had been destroyed, but we needed to collect it to record its existence. As I walked, the the stench of mold and rotting vegetation and animal/human remains was overwhelming. The only sounds were that of people dragging furniture out of their houses. It was weird to not hear birds or animals or even cars. The one positive was that there were also no insects. Apparently, mosquitoes and biting flies don't fare well in hurricanes.
We spent the day cataloguing/taking pictures of our belongings and then dragging them outside to the giant junk pile pile in front of our house.
Not everything went immediately into the junk pile. Bryan decided we needed places to sit, so he set up our front lawn like the living room had been arranged. The furniture (just paid off, mind you,) looks pretty good. We'd paid to have it treated for stains and spills, and I have to say...I'm a believer. The furniture looked good as new--on the outside. Underneath, the water had soaked everything, and the mold was horrible. But at least we had a place to sit and eat when we took breaks.
Speaking of eating, we lived off military MREs (meals ready to eat) and water. And the MREs were pretty damned tasty. Of course, we were constantly starving because we were working so hard, so even the nastier MREs (like the one I refer to as "spongechicken") were devoured. I pretty much had to throw my vegetarianism out the window during storm cleanup, because it was impossible to eat that way when the only food provided wasn't vegetarian (though there were a few vegetarian MREs--though one was inedible no matter how hungry you were,) and that's all we had.
Back inside the house, we spent time salvaging and cataloguing. There was still a lot of water in the house, so the carpet squished when we walked on it, and we slipped in mud on the floor. Here's a crab we found living in the house. Could have been worse...the neighbor found leeches in her dresser drawers.
We had no running water, so going to the bathroom was...interesting. Basically, we had a 5-gallon bucket, and that was it.
Oh, and hurricane preparation lists always recommend bleach, which I've never understood. Now I know. You use it to sterilize drinking/washing water, you put a little in your pee bucket, and you use GALLONS on your walls, frame, and ceiling to kill mold.
During the day, Salvation Army and church volunteers drove by in pickups handing out ice and water, which was awesome.
By the time evening came, we'd cleared out the living room, den, dining room, and master bedroom. We reeked, we were filthy, and we were exhausted. We'd salvaged a few things that had floated in plastic bins and things that were in the top of Brennan's closet.
And we got a picture of Brennan's swingset, which used to be on top of the neighbor's roof, but is now sitting against her house.
Many of our neighbors had yet to be seen, but messages scrawled on garage doors by both insurance agents and rescuers let us know that they were okay, or that no one was deceased inside the house. Houses that contained bodies were marked with red stripes on the front doors.
People ask us if we were worried about looters. Not so much. We had nothing left to take. But looters came. The police arrested two men in our neighborhood who actually drove down from Tennessee with the sole purpose of looting. And one of our neighbors shot a looter who broke into his house. The neighbor then drove the looter to the hospital in the looter's own car...where the looter eventually died. The sign says "U loot, U get shot." Can't say the looter wasn't warned.
Up next, Day Three: Demolition
My hugs and prayers are still with you.
