Sandy Helping Hands

For two days in separate weekends I had the opportunity to help out victims of Hurricane Sandy.  It was so sad to see the destruction that this storm had done.  I am in a Young Singles Adult ward and they canceled church so that the singles could go and help out people in Long Island. 

 It is unbelievable that this area was literally underwater.

 This entire basement had to be gutted because of water damage.

 

Another whole basement ruined that we had to take out all the electrical cables so that they could be replaced. 

 

 There was two streets where there were four or five houses that burnt down.  I am not sure why the houses burnt down, but it was horrible to see these houses.  Most of the people in this area lost their basements and/or first floor, but to lose all your worldly positions would be very hard to deal with.

For this house we took out nails.  They were EVERYWHERE! They had nails every three inches all over the place top to bottom no joke! I never wanted to see a nail again right after this.

The water moved all of this guys furniture all over the place so you couldn't open the door to get any of the stuff out. 

 The first person that my roommate and I helped was a 73 year old man who has lived here for 55 years and never had to deal with something like this before. This basement when we first got here was filled with lots and lots of wet stuff that we hauled to the curb.  We did very well for just three people emptying this place!

 This man's basement was filled with water all the way to the top and it took 6 hours for them to pump all the water out. We started out in the basement with just his son, but of course he was too stubborn and had to come help us which really made me sad because he literally had to get rid of everything because of water damage.  He was an artist and I would see him look at his art that was ruined or some random thing that obviously held a memory for him and watch him look at it smile and throw it away.  I felt like he was throwing away his memories. 

So much stuff on the curbs everywhere you looked.