Durham and Middlefield Residents Step Up to Help Hurricane Victims

Remember the hurricane Sandy? It seems that things in the news move along pretty quickly, hurricane, election, holidays, happy New Year! Well, The Middlefield Federated Church sent a group of 32 people down to help with hurricane clean-up just last Saturday and that community, Keansburg, NJ, hasn’t moved that far away from the storm. We left at 5 a.m. and traveled most of the way in the dark. At 7:30 we met with over 1,000 volunteers who had come together for the same purpose at St. John’s Methodist Church in Keyport NJ, one town over from Keansburg. This clean-up effort was organized by Group Publishing out of Colorado. They have a long history of community revitalization and disaster recovery. The people we met were from so many states, we lost count. We were handed a bag with our prepared lunches and two packets of work orders and we were off.

The family my team helped was living in a camper in their driveway. There was Mom, Dad, two older teen boys, two large Labrador dogs and a cat. The mom shared with me that they hadn’t left their home during the storm because there was so much looting in the neighborhood that last time that they were afraid to leave. And besides, Irene wasn’t that bad. This house was only six houses away from the bay front, the surge did breach the sand dune and by the end of the night they had over two feet of water lapping at the walls throughout the house. They had all spent the night huddled in the attic crawl space of this one floor bungalow, hoping that the huge oak tree at the back of the house didn’t fall on it. It didn’t, but the roof does need a bunch of shingles replaced.

We spent the day pulling down sheet rock, cutting out floors and wringing and bagging insulation. We prepared the site for the building inspector to come and hopefully approve the rebuilding. We were tired and filthy, but it was good to know that we were able to bring them a big step closer to recovery.

The other half of our group went to another location to help empty a home of personal belongings before they could begin the gutting process. About an hour into the job it was realized that the structure was collapsing and could not be rebuilt. They helped the homeowner quickly retrieve some precious family heirlooms, but could do nothing else and were sent to another location to help.

Some of us drove around after our jobs were completed to see what we could see. It was hard. This is the arcades, amusement park, seashore, little village area of the New Jersey shore. It is an older area and it was hard to imagine what recovery would involve for this town, but we were pretty sure it would never be the same. An area like this one builds slowly over many years. It becomes part of the summer memory of childhoods, sweet and tacky with seaside breezes and sand that comes home in your shoes. Two crushing storms in two years are making it pretty clear that rebuilding as it was really doesn’t make much sense. But who can say what really does make sense?

We all returned safely to our warm homes and families and right into the holiday season. We didn’t see a lot of Christmas in that neighborhood. I know that we were able to help several families and overall many families were helped, but there is such much more to do.  

“We” were: Marilyn Keurajian, Dale and Seth Azevedo, Brenda and Tess Marino, Thom, Nate and Nic Knowlton, Phyllis and Austin Sheridan, Sue and Bob VanDerzee, Heather Wimler, Rachel Footit, Mitchell Parmelee, Tucker Fowler, Victoria Koch, Jen and Hannah Huddleston, Kathy Weber, Malcolm and Alexander Staddon, Elisabeth and Sara Kennedy, Cloe Poisson, Ben Wooding, Cheryl Fogg, Jeff and Rebecca Ford, Janice Keeman and Sarah Locascio, and Paul Bergenholtz.