Irene Relief

Hurricane Irene did quite a bit of damage to New England but not before hitting Eleuthera "head-on." Mike and Shannan Fastzkie fared safely but lost all of the shingles off the front half of their house in the storm. Subsequently their roof was leaking terribly and when it rained (which was almost daily), Shannan was breaking out the mop and trying to keep things relatively dry.

When we arrived 10 days after the storm, they still had no power but were able to run lights and fans off of a generator. The storm snapped all of the power poles in their settlement, overturned small buildings, and dumped tons of rancid sea grass inland.

I did not get many pictures of the surrounding community or "before" shots of our jobsites because we got off the plane, dropped our bags in our rooms, and got straight to work.

Here are a few photos from the trip...

We drove to Ft. Pierce, Fl and caught a Missionary Flights International (MFI) flight over to the island. While our task was in the forefront of our minds, the flight over and back on a small private plane was a highlight.

It also brought challenges...when the five of us arrived at the MFI hangar, Dick Snook (our pilot and the president of MFI) informed us that we had about 200lbs of capacity for luggage, supplies, etc. When we weighed our bags, we were originally 100lbs over weight. We knew the air compressor, nailguns, and nails had to make the trip so we began dumping clothes, handtools, snacks, toiletries and any non-necessities. Kudos to Keith Doster who stipped down in the hangar to change into one of the two changes of clothes we wore the whole weekend.

It was a bit snug but the Cessna 310 was a highlight for us all.

I did not get a "before" shot but you can see our progress from day one. The right side of the pic is what the whole front roof looked like when we arrived. The left side shows what we were able to complete in the first afternoon in spite of the rain showers.

Jeremy Keever cleaning nails and getting ready for tar paper...

Keith working on tar paper...

Charlie was tasked with cleaning up the corners so the ridge caps could go down.

For the most part we worked from 7:30 in the morning to 8:30 in the evening. This is Jerry surveying our Day 2 progress as the sun was setting.

The finished product. While there was still much patching to do, we were able to get the Fastzkie's in the dry so they did not have to worry about any more furniture being ruined or the need to break out the mops with every little shower.

We also put tarps on several other homes that were still leaking even after the first round of tarps went on. Charlie spent most of one day traveling the central par of the island with Martin and Kevin (two locals) checking on folks and applying tarps where they were still needed.

Brenda Lee's house was hit particularly hard. They are having to decide whether to try to save the walls or just start over. While thing look ok from a distance, the trip inside tells a very different story.

This is what was left of a back room.

We overlayed existing tarps with a bigger one where this roof was still leaking in Hatchet Bay.

There is still much work to be done on the island. Hopefully the repairs will hold with more storms on the way. It was nice to see the roof of the clinic (where we worked in May) was in perfect shape. Not a shingle was bent or out of place.

There is another team expected to head down this weekend and continue the work...Godspeed!