BILOXI, Miss. - 11:54pm
Before supper tonight in the dining tent, I joined a table of four young women who I had been working with all day. They were snacking on Chips Ahoy cookies and French onion-flavored Sun Chips, and just chatting about their day. I may be one of the adult staff on this trip, but I didn’t make a remark about spoiling their dinner. After all, they’re responsible college students, and after working under the blazing Mississippi sun all morning, then moving to a second worksite to help gut a house, they deserve a more than a few treats before dinner.
The foursome, Kirby Norris, Amy Berntson, Lauren Vandeventer, and Kenzie Huffman, all sophomores, came on this trip together. They also live in the same sextet together in Larson, and all four just found out they got accepted to live in the same honor house next year. Their project will focus on organizing activities and events for seniors and others in long-term care and assisted living situations. And by working along side these gals for a day, I can tell they all have a genuine heart for service, especially helping those who have had unfortunate circumstances seriously affect their lives.
I asked them to tell me how their day went:
“At our first site today, off Beach Road in Biloxi, we were cleaning up the property of a woman whose house was destroyed by the hurricane,” Norris said. “She’s just now rebuilding.”
When I asked these students questions about the property owner, they all began to chime in. Duane, the site overseer from Lutheran Disaster Response, made sure to tell the volunteers about the work they were completing, making each job a little more personal. It obviously stuck with these young women, as they all began recalling details:
“She was supposed to move out of her FEMA [Federal Emergency Management Agency] trailer and into her house last November,” Vandeventer said.
“The first contractor to rebuild her house backed out, and now the current one has been away because of a personal family [matter],” Norris explained. “He’s not working fast enough because he’s been away.”
“Which is frustrating for her because she’s running out of money,” Berntson added. “And she’s starting to have lung problems [believed to be] related to formaldehyde.”
When I stopped the conversation to inquire further about the property owner’s lung problems, the girls began talking about FEMA trailers. Later, I scanned a few documents from the FEMA webpage and found out that air pollutants from commonly used building materials, such as formaldehyde, affect air quality, and can cause respiratory problems and allergic reactions to those who are most sensitive to the colorless gas. Disaster housing was only designed to be a temporary shelter for hurricane victims, but as of last July when FEMA released a document entitled “FEMA: Formaldehyde and Travel Trailers,” the actual air quality conditions in FEMA trailers when lived in for extended periods of time and under “real-life conditions” had not yet been tested (http://www.fema.gov/news/newsrelease.fema?id=36730).
According to the same document, “All new, unused and unventilated travel trailers have formaldehyde in them. The concentration of formaldehyde can be reduced significantly by ventilating the units by running fans with open doors and windows…When FEMA learned about concerns about formaldehyde, it took steps to inform occupants about proper ventilation*, facilitated the exchange of trailers, provided alternate forms of housing when requested and available and initiated air monitoring and sampling plans.”
*“Important Formaldehyde Information for FEMA Housing Occupants” http://www.fema.gov/pdf/media/2007/072007_formaldehyde_handout.pdf
The young women I spoke with to don’t yet have this information from FEMA. All they know is that the woman whose yard they cleared today has lived in the travel trailer on her property for over two years. They know that she is ill and that she is suffering financially from things that seem beyond her control. And so they helped in any way they could.
“We cleaned up her yard to clear the way for the next step,” Berntson continued after our formaldehyde tangent. “We basically did a little work for the contractor so trucks can come in and haul away the rubble and beams and scraps and trash that we bagged and piled and pulled out of her [unfinished] house.”
Bag after bag of Styrofoam insulation was cleared from the property today and placed at the curb for (hopeful) removal.
“We aren’t experienced contractors or anything,” Vandeventer said of the work they completed. “But every little bit counts. I think we bring hope.”
And even though these students didn’t get to speak with the woman whose yard and building site they cleared, they know their efforts were appreciated.
“Right as we were finishing up, a man drove by and thanked us,” Huffman said. “He said he used to live across the street and he knew that [the property owner] was very grateful for us being here.”
One day work day left of OSR3! Check back for more stories!
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