Delta 4 is staying at Two Rivers Church. They are a non denominational Christian church that have opened their facilities to volunteer groups so they have a place to stay while helping the community recover. The boys stay in one section and the girls in another. Currently, my 5 females and I are in one of the children’s rooms. It’s a little tight, but the cots are pretty comfy. The church itself does not have showers, so there is a shower trailer outside of the building. The stalls are actually very spacious and clean, so I can’t complain.
Our sponsor is the Fuller Center Disaster ReBuilders. They stem from the organization Habitat for Humanity. Pete, is our main POC, and he is handing us over permanently to Wescott, a member of Two Rivers Church and someone who has taken an active role in helping his community. He has previous experience with muck and gut, as well as general handy skills, so Delta 4 looks forward to learning a lot from him.
So, my team seems to be the only team with an actual sponsor; everyone else is working under the AmeriCorps- Disaster Response Teams. I just had a call with a planning chief from ADRT and I will be required to submit certain information about the hours and the work Delta 4 has done every day at 7pm. My team is unique in the way that we are currently only working 5 days per week– everyone else is 6 days or more. I’m sure that we will probably be bumped up too.
New Bern, NC is beautiful. The sunrises and sunsets are to die for; now I know why every Nicholas Sparks movie ever was filmed here. There is a beach a little under 2 hours from us that we are probably going to visit soon. Today, there is a farmer’s market downtown, and we made plans to go there around 10:30am.
This is random, but 3 in 1 shower products are a life saver in this program. That is all.
Our first full day was spent mucking a house about an hour away from our housing. The couple, Roy and Judy, had been using Roy’s childhood home as their summer getaway, but this was the third time that a hurricane had really done damage, so my team was probably the last to be in there.
Yesterday, our second full day, we were at Neuse Forest Presbyterian Church. By early 2019 they hope to have a permanent “volunteer village” disaster housing for future hurricanes. We sealed in the walls with Kilz and next week we’ll help put up drywall and remove some insolation. After that, there are more houses to be mucked and gutted.
Megan Leigh Harris 