LIVE UNITED Y’All!

By Patty Youngs

I have been scheduling volunteers to help with flood clean-up since early August and when they ask me what they will be doing, I reply with a generic answer that I have been programmed to give. And then it dawned on me…this is lame…I have no idea what it’s actually like out there…I owe it to our volunteers to find out.

To myself: “Ok, so I’ll go out this weekend, it’ll be great. BUT, I have to clean my house, I have all this yard work, oh and my nephew has a ballgame. Oh, and I really need to go to the grocery store, maybe next weekend.” Excuse after excuse. Again, this is lame.

I got it! I will publicly promise to volunteer for flood clean-up on my blog. Problem solved, now I have to go. Crap.

Saturday morning, 7:00 AM: yawn, rollover, hit snooze. Yawn, rollover, hit snooze. Yawn, rollover, hit snooze. ENOUGH ALREADY…get out of bed!!!

7:55 AM: heavily caffeinate myself and then off to pick up my faithful friend, Erin, who has agreed to go with me. (Thanks Erin!)

8:15AM: Arrive to Harvey Brown. Mary’s here…she’s volunteering today too! And, look at all of these other people. Wow! This is great.

We sign-in, we train, we depart. We arrive to the work-site. On go the gloves and the masks; reality sets in. We meet the homeowner, she looks defeated. She leads us to her basement; nothing but black and the smell…I can’t believe she’s been living with this. My eyes begin to swell…tears want to fall…tears of sadness for this woman and the many others who have lost so much…I hold them back…we should be strong for her.

The basement: black, wet, ruins. A Christmas tree that won’t see another Christmas. Winter clothes that won’t keep anyone warm this year. Photographs that are now warped…history erased. One by one, we carry out a piece of her life, a memory.

Is this job easy? No. Is it fun? Not especially. Is it life changing? Absolutely. It is life-changing to the woman who lost a basement full of memories and necessities. And it’s life-changing for the volunteers who helped her to say good-bye, let go, and move on.

There are still 200 people living in this situation and waiting for relief…people who are elderly, disabled, or all alone. They need your help. No more excuses, sign-up today.

Patty and another volunteer work together

Mary, Patty & Erin

See more pictures on Metro United Way’s Flickr photos!

Volunteering flood, flood relief

Most of you are probably not aware that like so many in our community, Metro United Way experienced flood damage from the storms a few weeks ago.  I remember being at home ill that day, having tuned my television into the Weather Channel to watch what I thought would be a show about a massive hurricane hitting the Tampa/St. Petersburg area.  This was of particular interest to me 1. because I am fascinated by severe weather (tornadoes and hurricanes particularly) and 2. my brother and his family are in Seminole, Florida ( a stone’s throw away from Tampa and St. Pete).  Imagine my surprise when the scheduled program had been pre-empted by coverage of the flooding happening right in our city.  As I watched the river that was now flowing down Broadway, it dawned on me that the footage I was watching was only a couple of blocks from our office.   I turned over and immediately called the front desk.  It was then that I was informed of what was awaiting me the following morning.

The next morning the first thing I do after sitting my laptop bag down is go to the basement.  On first glance it didn’t look so bad, but the closer I examine the more uneasy I felt.  I have a slight sense of devastation and I feel somewhat overwhelmed of the task of putting it all back together.  The story I’m told as to how 4 plus feet of water ended up in the service elevator shaft and about 2 feet of water in the rest of our basement is extremely funny.  And being able to laugh about the damage was a huge plus, let me tell you.   Ultimately, the water came from  two commodes located on opposite ends of the basement.   (I have to admit I was thankful I was not there the first day to deal with what I’m sure was an unpleasant assault to the senses.)  By the time I came in the following morning the water had receded.  But now the real work would begin.

I’ve been talking about flood damage, but I as I write this I realize that this could be a metaphor for life.  Some unexpected, life altering event sweeps through and now you’re left to clean up muddy, mirky, contaminated waste. I realize having gone through this, that I have a great support team at Metro United Way.  The Building Services Staff I manage were already working on an initial clean up plan.  We had so many people in the basement looking at boilers, water heaters and pumps, electrical panels, pump motors, etc.  Everyone is hitting me from all angles with technical terms I know I don’t understand.  And all I’m thinking is “please don’t let this be some astronomical cost.”   Of course we lost some things.  Furniture, marketing material, computer/accessories, etc.  But honestly, a lot of it should have been purged a long time ago.

Like many of you, we are still recovering even today.  Our team is still working hard to complete the clean-up task and we have just begun the replacement and/or repairs to our mechanical systems.  It honestly seems overwhelming.  But like I said earlier, I have a great team working with me to keep it all going and to help us all stay on task.   That type of support and teamwork takes communication and plenty of planning.  It is building trust and being able to count on those team players to deliver on their commitments.  We had and still have quite a challenge putting the pieces back together, but the network of support we have in place will help us succeed.

I know that many of our neighbors are experiencing similar challenges as they try to recover from the flood.  And that flood could really be any number of things in their lives.  What they need is a strong support system. A team that will keep them on task and work the plan.

General flood, flood damage