Slowing down

This past week has definitely been a challenging one. Break is just around the corner and I think people are getting a little antsy and stir crazy. The village we are at can be extremely boring at times and the work we complete can be just as tiring. 

We finished up the sanitizing list last week with the worst houses. One was an extremely small home with insulation everywhere. Not the long yellow or pink strips but the fluffy little lint balls of insulation. Even though we cleaned the house before getting it wet, little lint balls would fly all over from the power washer and stick to our coats. And the basement of that house was full of a huge dirt mound in order to aborbs some of the water from the flood. By the end of the day we looked like we were tarred and feathered. 

The next house we worked on was a house that had been sprayed several times already but still needed to be sanitized. But we couldn't do our normal routine of using the power washer because it already had all the electrical wiring installed. So we had to spray the house with water using the pump sprayers, hand scrub all the walls and then sanitize with the pump sprayers. This was especially frustrating for me because I was usually one of the only people to be hand scrubbing. I guess not many people can say they have hand scrubbed the framing of a whole house. 

We have bee doing more fun activities around Minot which is such a nice change of pace and is fun to see the town. We went to the train museum, air museum, and the Scandinavian park to watch a movie. This weekend we are going to go to the International Peace Gardens up by Canada. 

We ended the week with a overnight ISP (volunteer opportunity). We went to the Minot University and worked for the Relay for Life event. We basically moved tables and chairs and walked around. Not much to do but it was a nice change of pace from our rough week. 

Currently, my team and I are waiting to be told what work we can do. We are wasting time doing paper work and waiting for people to get trailers for us to load up debris. We work too fast for our sponsor they are running out of work for us to do. Which in the long run is a blessing because that means we are getting people back into their homes and that Hope Village will soon I longer be needed.  Not sure what the rest of our time here will be spent doing but I'm sure it will be a slow last couple of weeks. 

At the air museum. (Above)

At the Scandinavian park. Above and below. 

The dump trailer I organized all by myself. Thanks dad for teaching me to be tedious and to have such good organization! :)

Update

Nothing really new for now. We have been plugging away at sanitizing houses and are making the list of "clients" decrease. It's been cold and rainy which is better than being warm with all the gear we have to wear while sanitizing. 

I went to the train museum this weekend just on the mear fact that we wanted something to do. The boys had fun playing with the toy Thomas trains that they had. 

This week it looks like we will be sanitizing houses again and then who knows what's in store for us for the rest of our time here. Seems like we are running out of work to do. 

No more demo...for now

We have finally finished with the cursed house where everyone gets hurt at. The last thing we had to do was wait to get dump trucks so we could bring everything to the landfill. While we waited for that, we have worked on several other house picking up debris and preparing the house to be sanitized. The weather has been rainy and kinda chilly so that limits what we can do to some of the houses. But, one of the houses we have taken the siding off, removed all electrical wires, cleaned and cleaned. I don't know how many times I have swept that house, it's ridiculous. But on Friday, we were able to power wash and sanitize the whole house. To do that though, we have I wear multiple layers of ridiculous clothing. The white suits are only worn for the hood because we have to be covered from the chemical in the sanitizer. And on top of that, we have to wear our rain gear to keep us dry from the power washer. But on top of that, we have to wear our P100 masks because of the mold we are spraying off. It's quite the process. We are going to get quite comfortable in these suits bc I think we will be sanitizing a lot more now. 

Other than that, nothing else exciting has really happened. We went a week without making a trip to the hospital or clinic!!! 

Not much planned for this weekend, we get Memorial Day off so it's a 3 day weekend here!!  

Somehow we are still alive...

This first week of work has been quite an adventure. After our moving of debris, we moved on to a house that we were too demolish. Our first day at this house we started by removing the shingles. It was a good day. The rest of the time since Thursday, from working on this house, we have not gone a day without and injury. These included, someone getting wood chips in their eye, a nail in the foot, electrocution, a wood chunk in someone's arm and 2 walls falling on the same person. From the walls falling on lex, he first suffered a concussion and then his arm in a sling. We are still working on this house. Thankfully all the walls are on the ground in pieces but we are convinced this house is cursed. 

Oh, more exciting stuff that happened, after lex got electrocuted from wires that should have been shut off, we broke the gas pipe and natural gas was everywhere. The fire department came as well as the gas company and we were delayed work for a while. Cedar 6 has a tradition now that each round the fire department has to be involved somehow. It's only been a week and we have had quite the experience. The house is fully demolished, just needs to be put on the dump trailer. 

Yuck!!

Today our work consisted of moving debris. We first started out at one house shoveling all the drywall and debris they threw outside. This took 2 huge trailers full (one picture). That took us about an hour so we moved on to the next house. We initially went to this house with the idea of just removing appliances that needed to get out but once we got there it turned into a whole day project. One of the appliances was a old chest freezer. This freezer was in the basement of this house, full of food. This food has been rotting in this basement, not plugged in or anything, for 2 whole years; going on the 3rd. It was discussing! We had to wear our big masks and that didn't even mask the smell. The freezer was too heavy to move by itself otherwise we would have never opened it. To empty it, we picked up the big bags of food and put it into bags. It eventually turned into soup so we took a huge cup and scooped out the remaining rotten smelly water into 5 gallon buckets, took it outside and dumped it down the sewer. Disgusting morning. The rest of the day we cleaned out the rest of the basement which included filling 2 huge trailers of wiring, duct work, drywall/plaster, and wood framing. 

Although I may complain, it has been a wonderful experience here in Minot so far. I enjoy the town and look forward to staying here. To top off our fun filled day, we had a huge fire! :)

Lutheran disaster response

We made it and are all settled into our home away from home in North Dakota. We are working for Lutheran disaster response and living in relief trailers for the time being. The picture with all the doors is our living/ beds. They all have one set of bunk beds so we split up and are separated into different rooms. Our bathrooms and showers are also another trailer which is shown the other pictures. Surprisingly, the showers are nicer than the showers in Iowa and Michigan. The beds are a lot comfier too!

Since we arrived, we have just been exploring the town of Minot. The mall and downtown are really close so that's a perk

We start our first day of work tomorrow!!

North Dakota, here we come!

We on on our last day of training here in Iowa before we head to Minot, North Dakota! I just finished packing up all my stuff again and waiting to pack the van. I have been increasingly consuming more and more things. Although i have learned how to jam pack this red backpack to the rim, i still need to reduce my piles for next round...

Had a wonderful weekend with my bestie Devin and will be sad to leave her again. But I'm super excited to rebuild houses! We will be stopping in Fargo for tomorrow night and will arrive in Minot Friday afternoon.

Almost time for bed as well, 6am room inspection before we head out...