Canvassing the Rockaways

My team has spent the last few days in the Rockaways, which is an area of Queens. Our job was to go door to door and ask residents and businesses if they had gas or electricity or needed any other kind of help. Compared to the Rockaways, the rest of New York looks like a five-star hotel. To give you an idea of what that means, here are some of the things that I've seen in the last two days:

The Empire State

Today is day 9 in New York city. Yesterday was Thanksgiving day. Right now I'm sitting on a counter in my teams housing location. Spread out in front of me are maybe 40 cots that AmeriCorps members are sleeping in, and there are 20 more in another room. Two NCCC teams are here, but the majority of those cots are filled by state conservation corps members- there are groups from Utah, Montana, New Mexico, and Washington! A lot of them actually extended their contracts in order to serve here in New York. We're staying in the Electrical Worker's Union Building, in Queens. No showers and only a tiny kitchen, but it's starting to feel like home.
We flew in to New York last Wednesday. I took this picture as we came in over the city:

New York is incredible. It really is a beautiful city, even in the state it's in right now, with so much damage yet to be repaired. 

In the week of work that my team has done here, we've spent time in Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens and Coney Island. Our first day was with a church on Coney Island that has been turned in to a distribution center, where people can pick up food, diapers, medical supplies, bananas...

We unloaded pallets of bananas that first day and handed them out to people as that came through the line. There are close to two thousand pounds of bananas in that picture.

Day 2 was at a nearby distribution center on Coney. While some of my team worked the line, handing out food and hand warmers, I helped to organize donated food into bags to be handed out. A man there told me about how the storm pushed massive piles of sand up into the streets. It has to be swept out block by block. Parts of Coney look like there was never sand there, but the next street over still has a fine layer of it over everything.

Day 3 was with what now seems to be our permanent project, working with the Red Cross. We spent Saturday going house to house in Queens, giving out relief bags and asking people what they needed. Some of the areas we went through were hit pretty hard.  Cars had been thrown around in the storm and filled with sand and water. Houses that looked fine on the outside were completely destroyed on the inside.  One woman told us that her basement flooded seven feet in seven minutes during the storm. Some of it was hard to see and hard to hear about.

Days 4, 6, 7 and 8 of work were also spent with the Red Cross, though since that first day I haven't done any more door to door work with them. We've been loading supplies from semi trucks onto smaller trucks that then get sent out all over New York. We're loading things like water, coolers full of food, adult diapers, baby diapers, baby food, work gloves, face masks, and hand sanitizer. I would like to be interacting with the community more, but I really enjoy working with the Red Cross. They've been doing work like this for a long time, and they've found a system that works. Plus, they're always giving us food!

Day 5, which wasn't with the Red Cross, was spent on Coney Island again. Some of Blue 1 worked at the church, but Alyssa, Lindsey, Anne Louise, Lois, Joey and I had another project. We spent the day with a woman from an organization called People's Relief, going door to door in two predominantly Russian speaking apartment buildings. People's Relief is an organization that began specifically in response to Hurricane Sandy. They're still young organization trying to find their feet, so the process that day was hectic. The woman from People's Relief was fluent in Russian and thankfully Alyssa knows some, but the rest of us did not. I did learn how to say "food!" for the day, but I've already forgotten. We went from door to door asking if the residents needed food or blankets, and handing out medical information. The buildings still didn't have reliable electricity, so for a bit we were walking down dark hallways with flashlights. 

Since Thanksgiving was yesterday, everyone wants to give us Thanksgiving meals. Four meals in the last three days have been thanksgiving meals, and I'm about to eat leftovers for dinner! A church in Brooklyn provided Thanksgiving dinner to all of the AmeriCorps teams in the area, including the Conservation Corps teams, another organization gave everyone living at the union building Thanksgiving dinner, the Red Cross gave us Thanksgiving lunch yesterday, and our housing point of contact provided dinner again for last night. So much turkey! 

Since I'm a van driver I've had to share some of the responsibility of driving through New York. When we arrived in New York my team got a new blue 15 passenger van. We named him Chaos. (If we get a third van, her name will be Pandemonium. That was my idea. Credit where credit is due!) 

Anyway, we've been sharing driving responsibility here, like always. Kevin drives the most though. He's also the most agressive. In fact, he's already been in an accident. We were trying to get out of our parking space after our first Thanksgiving lunch, and he backed into the car parked behind him. In his defense, we were parked on a hill, so either you barely push the gas and it doesn't move, or you push too much and it lurches back. It lurched. The van went silent. Kevin leans out of the window and calls back to Jake, who was backing him up: "Is there any damage?" Jake looks carefully, then yells back, "No!" So Kevin turns back to the wheel and says "Okay let's go!" Joey had to say, "Kevin, stop the car!" And then we sat in our parking spot while he filled out the form for an accident.

We've been working for eight days straight now, and we're starting to wear thin. But as tired as we are, I know it can't even compare to what so many people here are going through. Parts of the city look fine, but as we've traveled around to our work sites, we've seen some areas that still need a lot of work. For two weeks after Sandy hit, none of the trash system was running, and there are still piles of garbage on the street. There are downed trees everywhere. People are still having difficulty getting heat and electricity in some areas. Cars, houses, and businesses are destroyed, boats are upside down in rivers or thrown on to land. If you walk down a residential street you can see piles of people's water-damaged belongings out in their yards, or concrete and sheetrock from homeowners gutting their basements. Some of the stories I hear are truly heartbreaking. During our first day with the Red Cross a woman told Anne Louise and me a story about a family who got in their car to leave the area right before the storm surge hit. The whole family and their dog drowned when the water came rushing in. 

Some more teams from the Pacific Region are now being sent to New Jersey. I'm so glad that our region decided to increase our support out here, it is badly needed. Our team is also hoping to shift to a more long-term project soon. Distributing food and supplies is very important in the short term, but it doesn't really solve the problem. We are also hoping for a day off soon. The rumor is that we'll get one on Sunday!

In Limbo On Standby

My team was scheduled to leave at 10 o'clock a.m. after induction Thursday morning. Instead Joey called a meeting in the 3rd floor lounge. By this point we know exactly what he was going to tell us, but we waited to hear it anyway.

The night before induction we had a community meeting with all of the staff and Corps Members. They congratulated us on completing CTI (Corps Training Institute), gave a few announcements and a couple speeches. Then they dropped a bomb. They told us that the Pacific Region would be sending 70 Corps Members to the east coast. They couldn't tell us much. They had no idea what members would be doing, or how they would get us there, or how long we would stay. All they knew was that of more than 600 AmeriCorps members already in New York, 160 are about to graduate from the program and go home, leaving a volunteer gap that needs to be filled. The Pacific and Southwest Regions are in the right position to fill that gap, so each are calling off projects to deploy members east instead. And of course they would be calling off low priority projects first.

So when Joey called a team meeting to tell us we weren't going to be leaving for Oregon that morning, no one was very surprised.

My team is currently on standby until Tuesday. By that time, if they haven't figured out transportation to New York, we will go to Oregon and complete our original project. But what they want to do is put us and six other teams on planes and send us to the east coast, where we will stay on a huge boat in the NYC harbor and serve the city as best we can.
I have already said how much I want to go east, so I won't repeat it. This almost feels like a dream though, and I keep expecting to wake up from it. All of the other teams have left on spike, leaving us here in a strange ethereal limbo. The bags we packed for Oregon are now spread all over our rooms, our fridge is an eclectic assortment of food, and our days are unscheduled and purposeless.
All I want is to know what's going to happen next.

Packing up, heading out

My team is leaving tomorrow to head north to the small town of Silverton, OR. The last few days have been a whirlwind of planning and packing and cleaning so that we can be ready to go at 8:00 tomorrow.

As VST coordinator I had to make sure that Mayhem was ready for the long drive. Joey took her in for a car wash, brake check and tire rotation. When he got back the whole team helped pull out the seats so that we could brush out the dirt and mop the floor. Mopping the van sounded like a crazy idea, but by the time it was done Mayhem looked as good as the first day we got her.
I was responsible for inspecting the van. I made sure the seat belts worked. I wrote down every dent and scratch, and the small chip in the windshield. I made sure we had jumper cables, tire chocks, and triangles. I checked the oil, wiper fluid, and coolant. I checked the pressure on our fire extinguisher and our tires. I even learned how to check the belt. I swear that by the end of this year I'm going to know more about cars than I ever bothered to remember before.

In order to deploy to our various projects, each team has to do a project brief. Basically, each person had to prepare a few sentences on an assigned talking point, then as a team we gave the presentation to Blue 2 and our Unit Leader, Andy. Shaunacy and I were assigned to talk about our living situation at the gardens, and how we would prepare to adjust to it.

After the brief, we just had to pack, and pass our room and kitchen inspections. Shaunacy and I have already packed our red bags and passed our room inspections. The kitchen is clean, and our inspection is scheduled for 30 minutes from now. Tonight we will graduate from the training program, and tomorrow we finally head north! I am so excited to take the next step, start the real work, and see what these next nine months are going to be about.

The Big Reveal

Joey finally told my team where we're going for our first spike! After we finished dinner and general announcements he laid our project briefs upside down on the table, and when they were all laid out he said "Flip!" and we all turned them over.
Blue 1 is going to the Oregon Garden! It's in Siverton, Oregon, which is about an hour south from Portland. We will be working to "conserve, rehabilitate and improve" individual gardens, wetlands, and an old oak grove. We will also be upgrading and installing new trails and making educational signs for the garden.

There is, however, a small possibility that my team could be sent to the east coast to help recover from Sandy. Jose, our region director, told us that they were preparing our  current sponsors for the possibility that we will have to leave. Every Pacific Region  Corps Member filled out Red Cross volunteer registration paperwork last night that would let us deploy quickly if need be. The Pacific Region is farthest west of all five campuses, but we are actually the third that would be called in. Two of the five regions currently have FEMACorps Members at them, who are doing administrative work with FEMA, rather than the hands-on work we would potentially be deployed for.
I would really love to go east. The work I'll be doing in Oregon will be valuable, but there is just no comparison to the difference we could make on the east coast right now.