Wednesday night a small team of folks from Galilee United Methodist church in Sterling Virginia piled into an SUV towing a small trailer and drove north for an early start to the final weekend of the summer. Our Labor Day destination was the New York City burough of Staten Island. Shortly before midnight, we arrived on the Southern tip of Staten Island and settled in at Bethel United Methodist Church for the night.
We are not in NYC for a last summer vacation. We are here to help in the work of recovering from Hurricane Sandy. On Thursday, we headed to our work site near the eastern most edge of the island. The area was hit hard by Hurricane Sandy in 2012. On the surface, things look pretty normal, but we learned that for many recovery is still somewhere off in the distance. Sandy may be fading in terms of attention, especially when compared to Katrina, but the human costs of Sandy are just as real today as they were two years ago.
The home we are working on is small. The home owner moved to Staten Island from Brooklyn a few years before Sandy hit. She lost a gazebo and a car in the flooding that covered most of her home. Although, the gazebo may have saved her house from being totally destroyed. She is raising five grandchildren and dealing with the ill health of the grandchildren's mother.
She commutes three hours from Long Island to meet us at her home. She has endured having rebuilding materials stolen including some that were donated and some she bought. She now has to buy much of what is needed to finish rebuilding her home.
Major structural work is mostly done. Finish work like kitchen cabinets, bathrooms, floors, trim, and final painting remains. Once all this work is done, she will have to have licensed plumbers and electricians take care of their respective pieces.We had to clear out the many building materials stored in the home to even figure out what was jobs we could tackle.
On day one, we got a garden window installed in the kitchen, trimmed out some of the windows and pulled together a good plan for day 2. We wrapped up the day with an evening excursion to Manhatten via the Staten Island Ferry.... more on all this latter.
Major structural work is mostly done. Finish work like kitchen cabinets, bathrooms, floors, trim, and final painting remains. Once all this work is done, she will have to have licensed plumbers and electricians take care of their respective pieces.We had to clear out the many building materials stored in the home to even figure out what was jobs we could tackle.
On day one, we got a garden window installed in the kitchen, trimmed out some of the windows and pulled together a good plan for day 2. We wrapped up the day with an evening excursion to Manhatten via the Staten Island Ferry.... more on all this latter.
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