“To hire people to come in and do this, oh, it would’ve cost too much,” said Reddaway, 86, whose neighborhood near John R and 11 Mile was inundated with basement backups Aug. 11 in southeast Michigan’s record-breaking rainstorm.
Reddaway and his wife had help last week from All Hands Volunteers, an international organization based in Massachusetts and founded in 2005, one week after Hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans.
Two miles away, another group of volunteers — these wearing orange T-shirts that said Samaritan’s Purse — marched into another basement in Madison Heights.
“We were in a mess,” said homeowner Suzanne Moldenhauer, 80, who lost her husband last year, then lost everything in her basement last month. Piles of damaged junk littered her backyard, but much more remained in her cellar.
“I have a son who lives a mile away and he’s done a yeoman’s job of getting things to this point, but it’s bigger than a one-man job,” Moldenhauer said. Referring to the volunteers, she said: “These people are from all over, and they haven’t asked for a penny.”
From across the country, a dozen nonprofit groups have sent volunteers to help metro Detroiters who are still struggling to clean up after the flooding. Workers of all ages, and from as far away as California and New England, have spent weeks lugging metro Detroit’s sewage-soaked trash to curbsides, knocking out ruined drywall and swabbing floors with disinfectant, according to state and local emergency-management officials.
“We usually spend about a day at each house,” said Richard Quintano, 54, of Ft. Wayne, Ind., who along with his wife volunteered with Samaritan’s Purse, a nonprofit based in Atlanta and run by Franklin Graham, son of evangelist Billy Graham.
Also helping are volunteers who hail from metro Detroit, like Courtney Strauss, 22, of Warren, who said the crew from Samaritan’s Purse was sleeping at her church, “so I came to help them out.”
Still others have pitched in from outstate Michigan, like 88-year-old Mary Young of Freeland, who politely declined desk work and spent a day doing vigorous manual labor at a house in Warren, said Jason Alexander, a communications specialist with the Michigan Community Service Commission, an arm of state government.
But there haven’t been enough Michiganders pitching in, said Alexander, whose agency is coordinating volunteer efforts in the tri-county area from a temporary office in Detroit.
“I have people calling every day, asking for help. All I can say is, we’re trying to get more volunteers,” he said. Officials of some national aid groups are perplexed about why metro Detroit hasn’t produced more volunteers, he said.
“But it’s not like a tornado, where you can see the damage. I think people are saying, ‘Oh, it’s just a lot of basements,’ or they think it’s all over with,” Alexander said. Although the storm struck nearly a month ago, many low-income residents, including many seniors and those with disabilities, still need help, he said.
Fewer than 40 Michiganders have volunteered through the state’s office, reached by using the United Way’s 211 line or logging on to computer forms provided at county and state websites, he said.
An additional 20 volunteers signed up at recruitment centers held on two weekends last month, one at a church in Royal Oak, the other on the Wayne State University campus in Detroit, Alexander said.
At the same time, a report from the state office showed it logged more than 2,000 requests for volunteer help in August. The requests came in via phone lines staffed by 10 volunteers from AmeriCorps — the federal government’s youth volunteer service.
One person who sought help was Clinton Township resident Theresa Chiang.
Her basement floor was split by the storm into a foot-wide crack that now spouts water each time it rains, while dangerous mold is creeping up the walls, she said.
Chiang, 31, and her fiancé are living with relatives in Troy while they await word from their insurance company about whether their house is repairable. They’d planned to be married this fall in the backyard, but after the storm flooded their home, they hoped that volunteers would help to rescue wedding decorations that filled the basement, she said.
“It really has been a struggle trying to find help. People say, ‘Oh your basement flooded,’ but they have no idea what everyone in our neighborhood is going through,” said Chiang, her voice cracking as she told of injuring her back after four days of hauling out the soggy decorations, all ruined.
Using the Macomb County website, Chaing filled out forms to solicit help from volunteers, “but I never heard back,” she said. “We’re not elderly people, we’re not disabled, so I just presumed that there’s other people who need it more than I do. But I think anybody in these situations can use help.”
Requests for aid received on Macomb County’s website are referred to various agencies, including the United Way’s 211 line, said Victoria Wolber, director of emergency management and communications for Macomb County.
“We’re offering assistance when we can,” Wolber said.
Some metro Detroiters volunteered in their own neighborhoods, said Monique Beels, superintendent of the Clawson Public Schools.
“Clawson’s a small, tight-knit community, and what I’m seeing is, when your house is done, you help your neighbor,” Beels said last week, as she showed federal and state inspectors around school buildings damaged in the August deluge.
School staff stepped up to take home carloads of school equipment and preschool toys, to be washed and disinfected in their dishwashers, safeguarding them for return to Clawson’s preschoolers, said Beels, one of a dozen school officials to lose their parked cars to flooding outside a school administration building.
Back in the Reddaways’ basement in Madison Heights, one item of junk last week was just too heavy to carry up the basement stairs — an ancient, waterlogged piano. That didn’t faze workers from All Hands Volunteers.
“I get free housing and food for all the days I work,” said Alli Farrell, 24, of Berlin, Conn., as she wielded a 5-pound sledgehammer: BAM! Ding-ing-ing ...
Each hammer blow triggered a quaint chorus of tones from the dying piano. Before long, the old instrument sat in pieces at the curb. First, however, an onlooker from the Michigan Community Service Commission couldn’t hold in a quip about the volunteers’ success.
“I hate to say it, but this is music to my ears,” Alexander said.
©2014 the Detroit Free Press. Distributed by MCT Information Services.
