Day 158 - Volunteer for a Disaster Relief Effort

Date: June 13th, 2010

Like most people, I watch the local and national news well enough to know when something goes down.  I'm generally aware of earthquakes, hurricanes and major tornadoes.  So when a series of tornadoes struck Michigan and Ohio on June 6th, I saw the story on television and online.  My usual reaction is to see the story, feel bad and do nothing.  Disasters always seem so far off when we aren't directly harmed by them.  That's why I was so shocked that it only took about an hour to get ourselves down to Millbury, Ohio.

Earlier in the week, I found out from my friend Tim that he'd spent a portion of his formative years in the Millbury, Ohio area and had even gone to school in a building attached to the high school that was destroyed by the tornado.  Needless to say, it hit a bit closer to home than these stories usually do for me.  Even so, for the past 25 years, as much as I am ashamed to admit this, seeing those stories, feeling bad and maybe  thinking about considering going and helping, was as much as I ever did.

I'm not sure what made this time different, but I found myself asking Tim if he'd like to head down to Millbury over the weekend and do some clean up.  After a little searching, I found a church that was accepting untrained volunteers.  One of the things I never thought about before was the need for trained volunteers at these things.  I knew there were some jobs that didn't require training though and it was just a matter of  finding them.  So Tim, Justin and I, got packed up and drove down early on Sunday morning, in time to see a block long procession of firetrucks leave the station.

Unfortunately, as we pulled into the church parking lot, it became clear that nobody was around.  The clock read 10am and the sign on the church read 12-5pm for volunteers.  We stood around for a minute, wondering what to do, and decided we would simply drive to the area and see if anyone knew where the volunteers should go (being careful, of course, not to get in the way).  As we drove up to the school, the devastation became obvious.  There was a toppled line of school buses, the roof was collapsed in the middle of a beautiful brick building, and the football field was still littered with debris. 

After a little while, we found the red cross set up and got ourselves signed in as volunteers for the day.  In what was, perhaps, the most surreal moment of the whole afternoon, the man at the volunteer station instructed us to go a couple blocks away and meet up with the mayor, who would take us to the clean up site.  The mayor.  I mean, it makes sense, but gosh if I didn't ever think about what a mayor would do in the middle of all that.

Once we got there and the utter devastation sank in, we spent about four hours clearing out bits of debris.  Because the tornadoes came through a week before, most of the big stuff had been cleared by crews.  That being said, the mayor told us that there wasn't a lot of big stuff.  The tornado had essentially acted like a blender and all that was left were the small tokens we were picking up.  The idea of being in the middle of that was too petrifying to contemplate while we were there.  I made a point to ask the mayor how he felt about people taking pictures.  He said he wanted as many people to know the extent of what happened in his town as possible.  So while I spent most of my time on clean up, I did take some time out to take pictures of the area we were working in, so you all could see what a tornado does to a neighborhood.

I wondered on the way down whether there was something cheaper or less altruistic about going and doing cleanup "because I've never done it before".  It goes without saying that this project was not mentioned a single time while we were down there -- it just seemed so terribly inappropriate.  Even so, just knowing that part of the final motivation that made it happen, instead of the usual reaction, was this project; well, I had some guilt for the first part of the day.  I kept it to myself, as cleaning up was taxing enough for everyone there.  Around about 1pm, Tim looked at me and thanked me for recommending we come down here.  Like me, he'd never genuinely thought about getting in the car and going to a cleanup effort.  It wasn't until I recommended going to Millbury that he thought about it this time.  Justin nodded in agreement.  At that point, my guilt went away.  While good acts don't excuse bad motive, the fact is that sometimes the impact does outweigh the selfish reasoning.

There is one brilliant act that I heard about pursuant to this storm that I want to share, mostly because I would encourage anyone who reads this to do the same thing.  Justin's younger brother Aaron was home alone in Michigan when the storm rolled through.  Knowing that there was a tornado warning and that he was by himself, he ran to the basement and made sure that he brought a harmonica with him.  Initially I giggled at this, as did Justin, until it was explained.  See, Aaron's logic was that if a tornado hit and he was trapped or pinned in a way that made yelling impossible, he could still breathe in and out.  So he had the harmonica there to let people know there was someone in the house.  It was such an insightful move, I just had to post it.

Now, you may have noticed that I said I took pictures, but there are none so far.  Usually I like to tease about my pictures, post pithy captions, bask in my own creativity, etc... etc...  That really didn't seem like the way to go, given the severity of the situation we found before ourselves.  So I decided to save them to the end and let them speak for themselves.  The only thing I will say is that while some cleanup had been done already, nothing had been torn down, so if you see a foundation without a house, its because the tornado took the whole house clean away.