Day 1: Tornado Recovery

We began the morning bright and early with squeaky cots, lots of yawning, and good ole southern buffet. Then we hit the road to do tornado cleanup in Birmingham.  The devastation was unreal and difficult to see.  It was also hard to understand how one house would be leveled and then next door the house would be untouched.
The first project was to repair the vinyl siding on a Habitat home.
The homeowner had only been living in her house a week, before the tornado hit.  She said that she didn't even know it was coming until it was too late.  She grabbed her two young children, held them close and prayed until the storm had passed.  The majority of the Habitat partner families were home at the time.

One of the back walls needed to be fully replaced since another home's roof had flown right into it, knocking it off balance and adding a few holes to the plywood.              The homeowner was gracious, allowing us to use her water, and opening up her home to us.  She said, "I'm just glad you're here."

The second half of the day consisted of working on a new build, their Women Build up the street.  While some teams cleaned up yard debris, continued with vinyl repair, and deconstruction, we got to nail plywood into the new house; it was rough! By this point the temp had hit 90 and we were all feeling it, even the construction managers, Omar and Jaronamo; but we continued on and just look at the progress that can be made in just a couple hours, with a dedicated group of 15!

Tomorrow we will be back on schedule painting and doing repairs at four sites, so stay tuned!