Response Crews Help to Heal Bridge City

Wearing a helmet for protection, Joe Treffers started his chain saw and went to work on the tree that had been blown down by Hurricane Ike and onto a small white house in Bridge City, Texas.

Treffers is a member of the 10-person rapid response crew sent by the Christian Reformed Church World Relief Committee's Disaster Response Services (CRWRC-DRS) to deal with the wreckage in the wake of last month's hurricane.

Meanwhile Gord Schreur his friend and neighbor in Zeeland, Mich., picked up the fallen limbs and branches with the CRWRC's backhoe. Schreur, a retired dairy farmer, scooped the debris into the machine's bucket, navigated through a gate in the backyard fence, and piled the tree parts on the side of the road.

So far, CRWRC has sent two rapid response crews to help with the immediate needs following Hurricane Ike. Reconstruction crews will come later, says Bill Adams, DRS director.

For more than 20 years, DRS volunteers, affectionately known as "Green Shirts," have come from all over North America to give of their time and talents to help clear debris, assess needs, and rebuild homes after disasters strike.

"We need more people like this," said local resident Jan Granger as the DRS crew worked on the tree that had crashed into the home in Bridge City. "This is a big relief and a big help."

Granger says her disabled relatives, who live in the house, didn't have the money or insurance or any other resources to get the tree off the roof.

After removing the tree, the crew was on its way to get instructions for its next job from Doug Vander Meulen, one of the team leaders.

Vander Meulen, owner of a sheet metal business near Kalamazoo, Mich., was working with others to spray decontaminant on the exposed studs, walls and doorways of a home that had been "mucked out" to remove the sea mud and then gutted earlier in the week. The home had been flooded by several feet of water from the 12-foot storm surge that Hurricane Ike pushed in from the nearby Gulf of Mexico.

"I've got not stove, no washer. We lost two air conditioners in the flood," said Betty Jean McGee. She and her husband, who is disabled by diabetes, are living in a trailer until their home is habitable again. Like many others, she had no insurance or savings and has relied on the kindness of strangers such as the "Green Shirts" for help.

"These people have been here all week and they haven't stopped working yet," she said. "We've been happy in that house. I hope to get money from FEMA to rebuild it."

Taking a break from his work, Vander Meulen told Gord Schreur, the other rapid response leader, to start gutting another nearby home that had been swamped with flood water and muck. Of the more than 3,000 homes in Bridge City, only about a dozen were not damaged by the hurricane.

When the team arrived at the house, they saw that someone else had shoveled out the muck, leaving sodden cabinets, bathroom fixtures, and floors and walls that had to be removed.

Before they started, Schreur and Bob Hubers, a volunteer from DeMotte, Ind., took the owner through each room, explaining what needed to be done. Once she agreed to the work, the rapid response team went at it.

In the kitchen, Bert Steensma, of Byron Center, Mich., started tearing out a doorway and then used his hammer and a pry bar to help rip out the kitchen sink and counter. "Doing volunteer work like this helps me focus on how much we are blessed," said Steensma. "You come back from these jobs more blessed than you are blessing."

As a final job of the day, DRS volunteer Hillebrand Van Denend, was helping to spray-wash and clean another house – this one in a fairly upscale subdivision – that had been cleared of debris and waterlogged materials earlier in the week.

"The woman who owns this house is divorced and working two jobs so she can make her payments," said Van Denend, a retired teacher who lives in Holland, Mich. "Our job is to help people who really need the help. Our job is to supply the labor."

Once they had cleaned the home, Van Denend wrote some words in a Bible that the crew left in the kitchen for the owner.

As he drove back to the former day -care center that was serving as a temporary home to the CRWRC crews, Vander Meulen recalled what Bridge City looked like when he arrived to help assess the damage.

"It was a huge mess. You step inside these houses and you get a sense of the many challenges these people face," says Vander Meulen. "Some people at first are too depressed and discouraged to start working. But often when we step in to help, it encourages them."

"They are making progress," says Vander Meulen. "Things are moving along. Garbage is getting picked up. Houses are getting being rebuilt."