Tuesday, September 16, 2008 9:37 PM CDT
Area men work in Mississippi River clean-up
Men from the First Baptist Church in Mattoon, Sullivan and Springfield assisted in two clean-up projects in July and August.
The first trip (July 31-Aug. 1) was to Monkey Run Trail, south of Hannibal, Mo., with disaster relief teams from three states joining in efforts to remove debris from homes and yards.
The second trip (Aug. 24-28) was to the area north of Quincy in the Mississippi River flood plane.
The work effort was coordinated with FEMA, Red Cross, local churches, YMCA and RSVP of Adam County. Breakfast and dinner were provided by members of the local churches, lunch by the Red Cross, showers at the YMCA, and sleeping accommodations at the churches.
At the Monkey Run Trail site David Carpenter, Elmer Voudrie and Les Sorensen from the Mattoon area, and Don Rogers from Sullivan helped in what is called “Muck and Gut,” which is a good description of phase one of the first clean-up effort in flood areas.
Six homes were worked on in a two-day effort. There were about 20 volunteers helping from Illinois, Missouri and Tennessee.
Those from the Mattoon area working in the Quincy area were David Carpenter, Don Gose, Bill Uphoff, Scott Warfel and Elmer Voudrie. Also helping were Don Rogers from Sullivan and Gary Short from Springfield.
The sites worked were in the area where a levee broke and floated cornstalks and debris over fields, yards, homes, out-buildings, etc.
The group worked on the second phase of clean-up, which required getting the homes ready for re-construction.
Two days were spent at the Raymond Morley farm, cleaning the dried muck from the basement ceiling, walls and floor with power washers, push brooms, squeeze, sump pump, electric generator, etc.
Windows were cleaned up to get ready for new replacements, loose bricks were removed from two exterior walls, the basement was sprayed with sodium hypo-chlorine and swept out, four grain bins were power washed, and a 20- by 40-foot deck that floated half a mile away from the home was recovered. The deck and frame was power washed.
The group’s second and third sites required lesser efforts in helping the residents get back to a normal living situation.
The third site was near the backwater at a home on 14-foot steel risers, where decks were power washed and siding repaired. The resident stayed in his home during the flooding and had to use a boat to get to his car for almost two months.
The last site was the Debra Cobb farm. Work was done on the interior of the home, working on the walls to get them ready to replace drywall, cleaning gutters, and power washing the exterior and the storm shelter “cave.”
The clean-up effort continues, with five more teams scheduled to assist this month.
Anyone wanting to volunteer to be part of one of the teams is asked to call Elmer Voudrie at 235-0436 for information.
Add your comments
Not already registered?
Then click Here.
Comment policy:
JG-TC.com encourages readers to engage in civil conversation with their neighbors. Comments that are submitted are not posted to the site immediately. They go into a queue to be moderated and may take several hours to be reviewed. Comments posted on Saturday may not be reviewed until Sunday afternoon.
In order to keep the page a set width, long lines (mostly long links) will be chopped. Try putting spaces in your links or consider using tinyurl.com to make a smaller link that you can include.
We will never edit or alter your comments, but we do reserve the right to remove comments that violate our code of conduct.
No comment may contain:
* Potentially libelous statements; such as accusing somebody of a crime, defamation of character, or statements that can harm somebody's reputation.
* Obscene, explicit, or racist language.
* Personal attacks, insults, threats, harassment or inciting violence.
* Commercial product promotions.
If you have any questions, please contact our moderator.
|
|
|
