Flood Recovery in Lyons, CO

As it has happened quite often with this blog, it went on a small six month hiatus, one that can be credited to a combination of a busy schedule, lack of internet connection, and mostly procrastination. My sincere apologies.

So, picking up right where I left off, my last entry summarized a whirlwind of events in the two short weeks of Corps Member Training Institute. The day after induction, most teams departed for their first round projects, with their destinations ranging from south Texas to Arizona to Arkansas, and many in between. Since my team was selected to be local first round, we had a few days off before beginning our project, a time that we used very wisely: 

Sun 2 after completing the Manitou Springs Incline, 1 mile of stairs

A few days later, we were on our way to Boulder, Colorado. Upon arrival, we settled into our beautiful home for the next five weeks, better known as the AmeriMansion:

Our home at the foothills in Boulder, Colorado

Enjoying one of the many snow days

We shared our six bedroom home among twenty people, living with a team from the Water Unit that was working with Boulder Open Space and Mountain Parks. All in all we got extremely lucky with our housing - we were living across the road from the foothills, with beautiful trails within walking distance, yet we were still within minutes of downtown Boulder, a place I briefly visited (and fell in love with) on my cross-country road trip two summers ago.

Located at the base of the foothills of the Rocky Mountains, Boulder is a very popular tourist destination. Known as a hippie haven, the city has been voted as one of the happiest places to live in the United States, boasting an array of outdoor recreation, healthy lifestyles, delicacies, arts, music, and everything in between.

For a vegan foodie, the food selection was a dream come true; for a yogi, an abundance of yoga studios (if you have never tried hot yoga, please do!) and the Shambhala Meditation Center offered much needed meditation escapes; for a reader, the Boulder Public Library, World of Books and Trident Booksellers were my sanctuaries, where I spent most of my free time; for a lover of the great outdoors, the beautiful trails surrounding Boulder and the Rocky Mountain National Park were pure joy; lastly, the city offered an abundance of breweries, a winery, and a few fun bars that provided dancing, karaoke, and even arcade games that pleased my inner-nerd!

A trail above Boulder, Colorado

Rocky Mountain National Park

For six weeks, my team and I worked with the City of Lyons assisting in flood recovery. Our tasks varied on a day to day basis, but they included mucking and gutting flooded homes (everything from ripping out dry wall to sledge hammering tile in bathrooms, from taking out tile floors to demolishing entire rooms), helping residents move their belongings out of destroyed homes into storage (we even helped a wine business owner, whose winery was located on the creek in the mountains, move dozens of boxes of wine from his flooded garage... yes, he did invite us for a tasting), dirt removal (it is exactly what it sounds like - you take a shovel, and you move dirt, avoiding the patches that were drenched in sewage water due to unpleasant odor), debris removal, and preparing homes for mold remediation treatments.

An article about our work in Lyons in their local paper, The Recorder

This home was lifted off of its foundation by the flood water

Removing dirt which covered this property during the flood

Mucking and gutting a church in Lyons, Colorado

Helping out in Lyons was my second disaster deployment, the first being in Moore, Oklahoma, following the tornadoes last spring. Unsurprisingly, both brought up very similar emotions. Emotionally challenging and draining, both experiences come with a silver lining - a shift in perspective that can only be experienced after talking to a person that has lost all of their material possessions, a person in economic distress, yet a person with gratitude and joy simply because they're alive.

 

I recall a conversation with a man who lived on the creek whose guest house was washed away while his daughter and her boyfriend were sleeping in it. A rescue mission followed and thankfully nobody was hurt. Having lost his entire home, having had his entire property destroyed, having had his family almost killed in the flood water, all this man kept saying was how excited he is to rebuild, and how lucky he is to have my team there to help.

 

We spend so much of our time worrying about the small things and chasing after the wrong things, attempting to fill the gap in our lives with material goods when in reality, who we are what is left once all of that is taken away.



I could not have asked for a better team



 

A Week in the Life of an AmeriCorps NCCC Team Leader (In Training)

As some of you may have heard, "The most recent continuing resolution passed by the House would cut all federal funding for the agency that oversees [NCCC], the Corporation for National and Community Service, effectively wiping out AmeriCorps."

Source: An AmeriCorps Alum Defends The Program Against Republican Defunding Threats

Time and time again I have heard people refer to my life as a "permanent vacation." I suppose it's an easy assumption to make if you base your judgment on the photos that I post without ever actually having a conversation with me. Sadly, we're human and that's what we do - we judge without investigating, we stereotype, we assume and we put people in boxes.

But here's the thing - most of the time, we're wrong.

Yes, I travel, I travel a lot. Unfortunately, travel and vacation are not synonymous. I am, however, fortunate enough to have a job that allows me to explore new places on a monthly basis, acquire new skills, work with and learn from amazing individuals, and get unlimited satisfaction from helping those in need.

So, what exactly do I do for a living? Well, I suppose there is no better way of answering that question than recalling the last week (and a half) of my life.

Wednesday: Partnered with the American Red Cross and answered
phones at the Rocky Mountain PBS telethon, raising $1,066,061
to aid the victims of Colorado Flooding

Thursday: Chainsaw training to prepare for future
environmental projects

Friday: Helped out flood victims with Boulder CareConnect, mucking,
gutting, and cleaning out basements       

Saturday: Volunteered at the Denver River Sweep,
clearing out invasive weeds along the bank

Thursday: Teambuilding Ropes Course, helping my roomie
get over her fear of heights

Thursday: Teambuilding Ropes Course

Friday: Partnered with Operation Blessing to help clear debris in 
Lyons, CO, one of the hardest hit areas

Friday: Trailer park in Lyons, CO destroyed by the flood

Friday: Assisted in clearing mud from a home devastated by a
flash flood in Lyons, CO

Friday: Mucked and gutted a home of a flood victim in Lyons, CO

Yes, I am lucky enough to have a job that does not always feel like work. However, what AmeriCorps NCCC members get done for communities throughout the United States is priceless. If I could have a dollar for every time that I heard "Thank you AmeriCorps, this would not have been done without you," perhaps I could fund this program myself...

Disaster Relief

Have you ever looked into the eyes of a person that has lost everything? A person that lost  his home, his most prized possessions, his beloved pet, his wedding album,his mother's ring who passed away last month? The tree he planted when his son was born has been uprooted. The mobile home he rented out, which brought him his only income, is wrapped around a tree. His barn was lifted by the tornado and landed on top of his home, crushing it.

I have, and it was by far one of the more difficult experiences in my life. What makes it harder is my complete inability to help out, to make things better, to make this nightmare disappear, to make insurance companies help these people rather than turning them away (one insurance company refused to cover tornado damage because they claim it was wind damage, which the person was not insured for...) Even with all the devastation, I have never seen people face devastation with such strength, such courage, and such a positive outlook on the future.

Shockingly, one of the first things that people ask is not about how we can help them, but how can they help us. "It's Saturday and you're working 13 hours, is there anything you need?" It's a humbling experience to say the least, and it makes me ashamed of all the times I complained about petty things. It really puts life in perspective, makes the things that are truly important shine through. These people had their homes destroyed, but all of them are so grateful that their loved ones are safe, because not everyone was as lucky. In this time of need, we have been welcomed with nothing but kindness and gratitude.

Before my arrival on disaster, I thought the biggest challenge was going to be the long hours. Today is our 12th day in a row of working 12-13 hours a day, but my physical exhaustion has been completely put on the back burner. The biggest challenge is the emotional difficulty I am having, because my empathy has once again proved to be my downfall. There have been many times when I teared up when hearing victim's stories, but the notion of remaining strong for them is slowly starting to seep in. I feel so incredibly blessed to be a part of this experience, and I ask that you keep the people of Oklahoma in your thoughts.

Casey and I assisting tornado victims in El Reno, OK.
The El Reno tornado was the largest recorded in history, 2.6 miles across.

Moore, OK Tornado: May 21, 2013

"On the afternoon of May 20, 2013, an EF5 tornado, with peak winds estimated at 210 miles per hour, struck Moore, Oklahoma, and adjacent areas, killing 23 people (and an additional person indirectly), and injuring 377 others. The tornado was part of a larger weather system that had produced several other tornadoes over the previous two days. The tornado touched down west of Newcastle at 2:56 p.m., staying on the ground for 39 minutes over a 17-mile path, crossing through a heavily populated section of Moore. The tornado was 1.3 miles wide at its peak. Despite the tornado following a roughly similar track to the even deadlier 1999 Bridge Creek-Moore tornado, very few homes and neither of the stricken schools had purpose-built storm shelters," (Wikipedia).

None of the images of tornado damage are my own - for obvious reasons, we have been asked to keep the photos we take in the disaster zone to a zero.

May 21, 2013 Oklahoma Tornado Path

Having been born and raised in Russia and spending the last 12 years of my life in New York, I have never experienced a tornado. I saw one once while on vacation in Pensacola, FL., but it was small and touched down on water. Aside from watching dozens of videos and looking through hundreds of pictures of the devastation, I had no idea what I was getting myself into. I expected it to be bad, but in reality it was much, much worse.

We left Denver early on Memorial Day, and made our way to Kansas where we spent the night. A very stormy, windy night, but I suppose that comes with traveling through "tornado alley." We made it to Oklahoma City the following day, where we had to study up on FEMA's disaster relief course. I do have to mention here that as far as housing on disaster relief goes we got EXTREMELY lucky - Oklahoma University agreed to house volunteers in their honors dorms, give us access to all of their facilities (HUGE gym included, score), and feed us.

Honors dorm at Oklahoma University

The following morning we began with 6:30 a.m. breakfast followed by a 7 a.m. brief. For the first few days I was assigned to work at a donations warehouse on the Shawnee Absentee Tribe land, coordinating volunteers, unloading 18 wheelers full of donations that came from as far as NY (it was amazing to meet the FDNY disaster response team who was also one of the first teams to respond to 9/11), and sorting through piles and piles of donations. Clothing, toiletries, canned goods, baby items, medical supplies, the list is endless. Seeing a community come together after a disaster, neighbor helping neighbor, asking for nothing but a smile in return was truly touching. People drove from different states and set up tents on warehouse property just to be able to help out. I feel so fortunate to be a part of this experience.

Donations warehouse, Shawnee Absentee Tribe land

FDNY and fellow New Yorkers in Oklahoma!

Lunch is served, courtesy of the American Red Cross