Hands On Disaster Response is now All Hands Volunteers

‘Hands-on’ spirit drive volunteers
By Molly Rossiter
The Gazette
molly.rossiter@gazettecommunications.com

CEDAR RAPIDS – A single light from the kitchen softly illuminates the fellowship area of Cedar Hills Community Church, 6455 E Ave. NW. A woman tends to her breakfast at the counter while a man eats cereal at a nearby table. The only sounds are the rustling of a wrapper and the clinking of spoon against bowl.

It’s 7 a.m., and the two are the early risers among volunteers from Hands On Disaster Response, a U.S.-based volunteer organization that responds to natural disasters in the United States and abroad.

Within the next 30 minutes, the remaining 40 or so volunteers will be up and have eaten and will meet with additional teams of local volunteers in the church parking lot. One or two Hands On representatives will be assigned to a cleanup team, and everyone splits up.

By 8 a.m., 11 teams of two to eight people are in different homes across Cedar Rapids and Palo, cleaning out the mud and muck left behind by the Cedar River, many times working alongside homeowners and residents.

What it is
Hands On Disaster Response is a group of strangers, in some cases hundreds at a time, who get together and respond to natural disaster.

With a core paid staff of four, the group is made up mainly of people who find the organization while searching the Internet looking for ways to help when disaster strikes.

“I just Googled ‘Cedar Rapids disaster relief’ and Hands On was one of the groups listed,” said Sheri Wildebour, 46, of Canton, Ill.

Wildebour left her husband and children behind in Illinois and drove to Cedar Rapids to hook up with Hands On volunteers for a week.

“The work isn’t easy, but everything else is just incredible,” she said.

In the week she spent with the group, Wildebour learned how to install drywall in Palo and cleaned and mucked out basements throughout Cedar Rapids. She even helped knock out a few walls.

“These guys don’t care what your skills are — they just throw you in a group and teach you what you need to know,” she said.

The only cost involved in volunteering with Hands On is getting to the site. The 40 or more Hands On volunteers in Cedar Rapids now call Cedar Hills Community Church home, sleeping on air mattresses in the sanctuary and in classrooms and eating meals prepared by church volunteers and volunteer cooks from around the country. Tools, cell phones, trucks and other materials have been donated by local companies or rented by the Hands On organization, based in Massachusetts.

Bill Driscoll Jr., 25, of Boston, is director of operations for Hands On Disaster Response. He has been in Cedar Rapids with the group since it first arrived June 21. What was planned as a 30-day project has been extended to Oct. 25.

“We initially started this out as a micro-deployment,” Driscoll said. “We’ve come to realize that the need here is really long-term.”

He never knows the number of volunteers he’ll have from week to week until groups or individuals register to come in. Sometimes there are about 200 or 250, other times it’s down to 50 or 60.

Regardless, he said, the work goes on. In the six weeks the group has been in Cedar Rapids, Hands On has worked with 1,000 volunteers from 33 states, contributed more than 8,500 volunteer hours and completed work on 146 homes — with work in progress on countless others. Driscoll estimates the group has thus far saved homeowners more than $180,000 in labor costs alone.

“Where we sit right now there’s still about another month of cleaning ahead of us,” Driscoll said. He’s working to get funding to help purchase drywall and materials for the next phase of work.

“There’s still going to be a great need in the future,” Driscoll said.

Work continues
A little after 8 a.m., Art “Arky” Vaughn, 86, wears a ventilator mask and carries debris out of his house at 610 G Ave. NW. A crew of about six Hands On volunteers is inside, knocking out walls and getting things organized.

Vaughn and his wife, Evelyn, have lived in the house since 1965. They now want to get it cleaned and repaired so they can sell it and move into a condominium. They’re grateful for the help of the Hands On volunteers.

“It’s quite a relief having them here,” Vaughn said. “I could plug away at it all day every day and still not be anywhere.”Vaughn grew up in the house next door to the one he shared with his wife, and lived in one of the two houses during the floods of 1929, 1993 and this year. Now, he said, he’s done.

“We’re not coming back,” he said. “We’d like to move into a condo if we can.”

Hands On team leader and assessment coordinator David Eisenbaum, 23, of Boston, has gotten to know the Vaughns and feels for them.

“They’re really great people, you hope things can work out for them,” he said.

Eisenbaum shakes Arky Vaughn’s hand and gets a hug from Evelyn before having to leave shortly before 9 a.m. He’s got an appointment to do a work assessment for a homeowner across town.

As he waits, he takes a look at the neighborhood and in the windows of the house at 937 Fourth St. SW. He realized he’d done an assessment on the adjoining address not too long ago.

“You assess the house but you also have to assess the homeowner,” said Eisenbaum, who graduated from college in May with a degree in history but plans to work in disaster recovery as a career. “It’s sort of a kind of triage because there are so many jobs that have to be done, you have to prioritize them.”

He said priority goes to the elderly or single mothers with dependent children, as well as homes that are in immediate need.

At this house, homeowner Amy Kirkpatrick, 35, already has mucked out the basement and gutted the walls. All that remains is some electrical work and mold removal before rebuilding can begin.

“We want to help these families, and many times they’re at work or can’t help with the work for one reason or another,” Eisenbaum said. “They have to continue on, they have to begin trying to live normal lives.”

Being from out of state helps the volunteers focus on the work and not the tragedy, he said.

“If this were my town, I’d feel more grief and that would be distracting, I think,” Eisenbaum said.

Summer vacation
In the northwest quadrant of Cedar Rapids, it’s almost noon. A small group of AEGON employees — given a paid day off to help with flood recovery — works on a small house at 1222 Sixth St. NW.

The entire house has been emptied and a pile of debris at the curb runs more than 40 feet long and stands almost four feet high.

Inside, workers are tearing down walls and knocking out the ceiling to the attic, where they’re finding river rubble tucked between panels.

The group’s Hands On leader is Daniel Greene, a 16-year-old high school student from Atlanta who didn’t want to spend his summer vacation working inside.

Greene wanted to work on recovery efforts in New Orleans, but couldn’t find a project on which to work.

He was working with an Atlanta Habitat for Humanity group when the flood hit Cedar Rapids.

After finding Hands On Disaster Response online, his father drove him to Iowa and left him to work.

“It doesn’t seem like that big of a deal to me, people needed help, and I came up,” Greene said of his age and responsibilities. “I like doing volunteer work. I wouldn’t want to do this every day for the rest of my life, but it’s a great way to help now.” He said the work has changed his perspective on his past accomplishments.

“Everything I’ve done up to this point seems so insignificant,” he said

End of the day
A group from the Minnesota Conservation Corps finishes its day moving appliances out of a muddy basement at 1233 Ellis Blvd. NW. This is the third worksite for the four-member group on this day.

“It just makes you feel good being able to help people in need,” said Chris Severson, 30, of Rochester, Minn. “I went to school for social work and had a job with that for a while, but it wasn’t as fulfilling to me as this is.”

The home’s owner, Erna Beatty, watches as the group moves her washer out of the basement. The floor is still covered with muck and the drain needs to be continually opened. Walls have been knocked out of her main floor, but she said the second story was safe. That was a month ago — she’s not sure what she’ll find up there now.

“We’re hoping to fix it up and come back, but I don’t know how much it’s going to cost and whether I’ll be able to pay for it,” said Beatty, who lived in the house with her 14-year-old daughter, Destynee Postal.

“I don’t even have the words for the volunteers that have been here working. I don’t even know what to say,” she said.

Back at the church, local Hands On volunteer John Burianek, 60, of Cedar Rapids, knows what to say.

“You’re saving my hometown,” he said to the Hands On volunteers who gathered for dinner and the end-of-day All Hands meeting. “I don’t think you’ll know in your lifetime what you’ve done here.”