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Hurricane Relief - What Would You Bring?
andyring asks: "In a few weeks, I will be going with a group from my church down to some of the hardest-hit areas in Louisiana and Mississippi to volunteer in the Hurricane Katrina relief efforts. We will be there six days, and have 10 people going so far. At this point, I don't know much more than we'll be in either Slidell, La. on the northeast shore of Lake Ponchartrain, or Pass Christian, Miss., right on the Gulf Coast near Gulfport/Biloxi. Not knowing what we'll be faced with, and having somewhat limited room for supplies, tools and equipment (probably a U-haul trailer), what would you bring on a journey such as this? Any Slashdot readers between Lincoln, Neb. and the New Orleans area interested in contributing to our effort, such as donations of equipment/supplies/tools/etc?"
I'd check out the Red Cross website or something. Or perhaps you could check this out, some good ideas there.
All your favorite Linux distros so you can "secure" all the Windows machines you find.
Nothing interesting to say...MUST...NOT...REPLY...ohtheheckwithit.
Duct tape.
You'll need a brick wall to bang your head and a baseball bat might help with federal officials. I volunteered, I rounded up some donated equipment for wireless ISPs who flocked to the area, and they totally got the run around from FEMA. A group of twenty five traveled to Kelly AFB on their own dime to lay in a phone system for evacuees and SBC had done the deed two days before they got there. FEMA coordination indeed!
If you're doing bricks & mortar stuff you'll probably get a lot further, but the technology relief stuff is just a joke - its going to be total pork barrel for the Haliburton sized companies of the world.
Good luck!
I am very easy to get along with, but I don't have time to waste being nice to people who are being stupid. -Theo
**insert favorite profound quotation here**
Don't bring your bibles. These people need real actual help, they don't need folks coming down there with ulterior motives trying to convert them.
Don't you think maybe there are some folks over there who already are Christians and would like a copy of the bible to replace one that was destroyed?
From the perspective of someone who currently works for Habitat for Humanity and has a lot of experience on this sort of thing, I would highly reccommend steel toed boots. The hard hat I tend to be a bit less picky on, as they'll only really help you in places you don't have to bend over much and will be ducking under things. I'd say throw a few in just in case but usually I just go with a regular cotton bucket hat.
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As far as tools and things, here's the (non-definitive) list that I would reccommend:
-Shovels (1 per person, round point)
-Crow bars/wrecking bars
-Breaker bar (looks like a giant steel pole with a point or chisel on the end)
-Hammers (lots)
-Nails (several boxes each of 8 penny, 16 penny, 16 penny duplex)
-Good cordless tools with plenty of backup batteries (I'd reccommend at least 18 volt if you can get them, get enough batteries that you can charge at night)
-Generator if someone owns one already (very handy)
-Wheelbarrow or two
-Sawzall or equivalent tool of destruction (2 if you can get them)
-LOTS of good leather gloves (go for full leather, do not get fabric-backed or cotton jersey. They just won't stand up. You can get decent leather gloves here at $22/dozen)
-LARGE water cooler - I'd reccommend a good Rubbermaid or Igloo jobsite cooler with associated plastic/foam glasses
That's a good start for a list. If you want more advice drop me an email with SLASHDOT in the title at the email addy on my account. I've done quite a lot of this sort of work before. Wish I could come with you but I'm stuck here
"Christ what a design! I could eat a handful of iron filings and PUKE a better emergency pump than that!"
Neither do you, certainly not one of this size, or you would know people need all the help they can get.
Can you use a hammer? Great, then you can frame a house.
Can you use a shovel? Great, then you can help clean the two feet of mud out of some peoples' houses.
Can you talk to people on a phone? Great, then you can help relay calls to relatives in different shelters or shore up the help lines at utilities' or relief orgs' call centers. You see, most people who really need to can't go to www.fema.gov or the like.
Can you spare some plastic containers/chest-like things? Building materials? Cleaning supplies? Shovels, axes, chainsaws, drills... no clothes please, by the way. We've got quite enough.
Do you know how to build/fix any part of a house? If you do, could you show me and others?
Could we have some jobs? You don't have to be Halliburton to bring business down here.
We need long term help, especially. Medical care, jobs, schools, houses, neighborhoods. The Military just get people off their roofs and make sure they don't starve or kill each other. The Red Cross if for emergency relief, and who knows if they'll share their overly large (70%) share of the donations. FEMA is for, apparently, acting as a political lightening rod and blaming Ray Nagin for everything.
Anything will do. People that "know what they are doing" are doing a shit job of it. People who have seen whats happening and just come down to do whatever they can have done the best job. By far.
Death and danger are my various breads and various butters.
Your comments are both intelligent and applicable, unfortunately they're also totally impractical. Habitat for Humanity has a very limited budget that's I believe almost entirely made up of donations. Don't get me wrong, I'd love to have the money to put together 4x4 or 4x6 framed homes, but that costs TONS of money. Pine is the basically the only wood used for construction any more because all of the hardwoods have been priced WAY WAY out of reason. For instance, a 2x4 8 ft pine board runs around $3.50 or so. The same board of oak, no splits, would run at least $80 or so. I'm not talking a 5% increase, I'm talking a 20x increase or more. Even pine beams are exhorbitantly expensive these days.
There has been some talk of switching to either steel stud/joist construction or ICF (Insulated Concrete Forms) for most Habitat affiliates, but both take a lot of planning and some specialized tools. Also both cost more than wood frame and therefore are rather sticky points for budgeting. The Habitat affiliate I work for has recently done two houses partially in ICF and it works very very well, however we had to raise the final cost of the house by $5,000 and I believe we're eating another $3,000 or so of cost just for using those forms. I sincerely hope they come down in price very soon because they're VERY stable and relatively easy to work with. But I'm babbling...
In short, we'd love to build something heavier, but unless someone ponies up the money for it and also sends the expertise to work with the stronger materials, we're stuck doing pine stick-built houses...
"Christ what a design! I could eat a handful of iron filings and PUKE a better emergency pump than that!"
I just got back from a week working in the Swingster Distribution Center in Ocean Springs, Mississippi. 16 of us went down and worked in the center helping them to receive, organize and distribute supplies to the victims of the Hurricanes.
I learned several things while I was there. It is hot, and the work is hard. You simply can't drink enough water. By the end of the day, we would be sucking down a quart of water every 15 minutes, and didn't stop until a couple of hours after the "work day" was over. Keep this in mind.
The Gulf Coast region, with the exception of New Orleans, is in pretty good shape as far as public services are concerned. We were a half mile from the ocean, and were working in a sound building with power and water. I actually didn't make it into the building very often, mostly working in the yard unloading trucks or moving supplies.
Just about everything that was actually on the coast was destroyed. Those houses that were not completely devistated were damaged severely and will need massive reconstruction efforts. The houses just a little distance away from the coast, a quarter to a half of a mile or more, were not destroyed, but still suffered some sort of damage. The wind did some damage to roofs, knocked down trees, fences, etc, but the biggest problem was still water damamge.
Several of my crew left the distribution center one day to help an elderly gentleman "muck out" his house. He was 80 years old, mostly blind (he had 15% vision) and was trying to clean up/repair his home by himself with no tools and no power. He'd sent his wife away because the house wasn't safe to be in.
The houses have water damage. This means that everything that was under 5 feet off the ground was soaked in water, and is now molding and rotting. It has to be torn out and carried to the street for the trash crews to pick up. Furnature, clothing, electronics, bedding, linens, pillows, appliences, TV's,... you name it, it's ruined.
The biggest job is just removing the trash. Once it's gone, the house has to be cleaned with bleach or some other mold inhibitor. Dishwashing gloves come in handy. Once cleaned, it can be rebuilt, and that is a fairly straightforward construction job. Any damaged framing must be replaced, drywall goes up, flooring goes down, trim and moulding goes in.
There is also "yard work" that needs to be done. Some homes have already fixed this problem. They look like nothing has happened. It has been several weeks, so if their house was not too badly damaged, they had time to fix the yard up. Others look like a war zone. There is debris of every imaginable kind there. I could show you some pictures. I found a microwave oven with a crab living in it, next to a torn street sign. 10 feet over, there was a Grand Piano laying upside down.
There are crews that move through the streets with large grapplers and trucks to haul away the debris. They take it to a central point where it's piled up. The piles are HUGE. While I was there, I ate meals along side crews that did nothing but cut up downed limbs with chainsaws. Other crews then moved the cut wood to the street. It's a massive effort.
That they need most is people willing to go and work, and not be picky about the job that needs to be done. I am not a manual labor kind of guy. I'm a computer geek and work in Infrastructure Problem Management, which means that I sit at a desk all day and talk on the phone for a living. Still, the job that they needed at the time involved moving large numbers of heavy boxes. That's what I did.
When you go to help, just do the job that needs doing. Don't worry too much about having everything that you need with you. There are TONS of supplies there. They may not be easy to find, but they are there. People have been shipping tools and supplies to the Gulf Coast area for weeks. What we need are PEOPLE getting involved.
David
If you're not living on the edge, you're taking up too much space.