639 Hunter Avenue
Twelve of us stood on Hunter Avenue, Staten Island Saturday morning. We were from Boston, and Brooklyn, and Philadelphia. We came because Cris put out a call for volunteers to work with All Hands, a non-profit organization doing disaster relief for Hurricane Sandy. Two months and change later there are still houses in need of salvage and repair. Our job was to clean and gut this house. Later a second team would spray for mold. After that, the rebuilding could commence.
Most of Staten Island was fine. Shops were open, people went about their business. The neighborhood still looked normal as we approached our destination, but you could see subtle warnings. Laminated posts were stuck to the walls: green for stable and working utilities, yellow for stable but no utilities, red for unstable and to be demolished. Some houses sat at an angle, like they were sliding into the earth. Others were twisted, the warnings spray painted in huge letters on the walls.
Stage one was removing furniture and clearing all the rooms. There were scattered shoes, couches, old magazines, DVDs. A thin stain line on the wall showed how high the water had come; it was just below waist height on me, on the second floor. While a few people began smashing a futon to get it outside, I walked through the abandoned kitchen to the back porch. I grabbed a rack of shelves to take to the dumpster, when a woman’s voice stopped me. It was one of the owners; a Russian woman in her 40’s explaining that she was keeping these items. I looked around the back porch, at the piles of clothing and cushions and boxes and thought: “This is all that remains of her house.” A man stood out in the backyard, her husband, pulling at the twisted wreckage of their above ground swimming pool. He declined my offer of help with a tired wave and a drag on his cigarette, and I left him to his work. Flooding had flattened the pool, pulled up trees, and tilted the bushes all to one side in front of the house. I made my way downstairs, helping move a refrigerator and a water heater, shoveling up mud and sodden insulation from the floor.
Stage Two was removing the drywall and insulation. We swung hammer and crowbar with the unconscious joy you feel when you are allowed to destroy something. Cheers rang out as massive sheets of drywall pulled away and crashed to the floor. I hope the owners of the house didn’t think badly of our levity as we smashed their home. Once the dry wall was down, and the yellow cotton candy insulation pulled out in long yellow rolls, you could see the beams of the house. The bases of each beam were speckled and patched with mold. The mold and rust had worked their way into the ceiling; even those panels would have to go. We pulled out screws, used long (and heavy) metal rods to rip up the floor boards, and the tiles underneath, and hauled out enough debris to fill three trailer sized dumpsters with a pile to spare by the end of our shift. We were tired and filthy and sore in every muscle, and I daresay more than a few of us were sore in our hearts. Out team leader was impressed; our motley crew took a three day job and would likely finish it on Sunday. We filled a long table at a restaurant next to the hotel. A few of us ventured onward to the Way Station, a Dr. Who themed bar that sadly didn’t live up to our expectations. We stayed for a few drinks, the returned back to collapse into our bunks.
Most of our crew returned to Hunter Street to finish off the house. Michael, Johanna, Laurice and I moved to a new address and new job: taking down a stairwell. It was a tight space, so only the four of us could fit. The drywall here wasn’t in easy to break sheets but molded onto chicken wire, much harder to smash through in our weakened state. We worked shoulder to shoulder and back to back, drywall raining down on us. The chicken wire took a little blood from me as I smashed through it with a crowbar, but the scary part was when I almost fell through the floor. I was hammering away at a section of wall, one foot on the wooden floor and another on a beam, when the beam shifted under my weight. I was close enough to the wall to catch myself, though I did give Jo a scare. We swept up all the dust and wire and woolen insulation and piled it in front of the house. The owners of both properties thanked us profusely for our help. You could feel the sincerity coming from them. They seemed in surprisingly good moods considering their situation, but then they had two months to deal with the shock of the devastation. They were eager to move forward and onward with their lives, and we all felt grateful that we could help them in some way shape or form. We wished them good luck, dusted ourselves off, and went our separate ways.
Most of Staten Island was fine. Shops were open, people went about their business. The neighborhood still looked normal as we approached our destination, but you could see subtle warnings. Laminated posts were stuck to the walls: green for stable and working utilities, yellow for stable but no utilities, red for unstable and to be demolished. Some houses sat at an angle, like they were sliding into the earth. Others were twisted, the warnings spray painted in huge letters on the walls.
Stage one was removing furniture and clearing all the rooms. There were scattered shoes, couches, old magazines, DVDs. A thin stain line on the wall showed how high the water had come; it was just below waist height on me, on the second floor. While a few people began smashing a futon to get it outside, I walked through the abandoned kitchen to the back porch. I grabbed a rack of shelves to take to the dumpster, when a woman’s voice stopped me. It was one of the owners; a Russian woman in her 40’s explaining that she was keeping these items. I looked around the back porch, at the piles of clothing and cushions and boxes and thought: “This is all that remains of her house.” A man stood out in the backyard, her husband, pulling at the twisted wreckage of their above ground swimming pool. He declined my offer of help with a tired wave and a drag on his cigarette, and I left him to his work. Flooding had flattened the pool, pulled up trees, and tilted the bushes all to one side in front of the house. I made my way downstairs, helping move a refrigerator and a water heater, shoveling up mud and sodden insulation from the floor.
Stage Two was removing the drywall and insulation. We swung hammer and crowbar with the unconscious joy you feel when you are allowed to destroy something. Cheers rang out as massive sheets of drywall pulled away and crashed to the floor. I hope the owners of the house didn’t think badly of our levity as we smashed their home. Once the dry wall was down, and the yellow cotton candy insulation pulled out in long yellow rolls, you could see the beams of the house. The bases of each beam were speckled and patched with mold. The mold and rust had worked their way into the ceiling; even those panels would have to go. We pulled out screws, used long (and heavy) metal rods to rip up the floor boards, and the tiles underneath, and hauled out enough debris to fill three trailer sized dumpsters with a pile to spare by the end of our shift. We were tired and filthy and sore in every muscle, and I daresay more than a few of us were sore in our hearts. Out team leader was impressed; our motley crew took a three day job and would likely finish it on Sunday. We filled a long table at a restaurant next to the hotel. A few of us ventured onward to the Way Station, a Dr. Who themed bar that sadly didn’t live up to our expectations. We stayed for a few drinks, the returned back to collapse into our bunks.
Most of our crew returned to Hunter Street to finish off the house. Michael, Johanna, Laurice and I moved to a new address and new job: taking down a stairwell. It was a tight space, so only the four of us could fit. The drywall here wasn’t in easy to break sheets but molded onto chicken wire, much harder to smash through in our weakened state. We worked shoulder to shoulder and back to back, drywall raining down on us. The chicken wire took a little blood from me as I smashed through it with a crowbar, but the scary part was when I almost fell through the floor. I was hammering away at a section of wall, one foot on the wooden floor and another on a beam, when the beam shifted under my weight. I was close enough to the wall to catch myself, though I did give Jo a scare. We swept up all the dust and wire and woolen insulation and piled it in front of the house. The owners of both properties thanked us profusely for our help. You could feel the sincerity coming from them. They seemed in surprisingly good moods considering their situation, but then they had two months to deal with the shock of the devastation. They were eager to move forward and onward with their lives, and we all felt grateful that we could help them in some way shape or form. We wished them good luck, dusted ourselves off, and went our separate ways.