First Post of 2012

Hey everyone,

Sorry I haven't updated this in a while. Christmas and New Years were way too much fun and kept me busy. But here I am once again. Since my last post, there has been plenty of fun and exciting things happening here in St. Louis and all around Southern Missouri.

Starting off, I flew home for Christmas and spent a lot of time with Sarah. We went skiing, walked Gnarly, and went to the Denver Aquarium. We spent new years in Boulder with all our friends and then before I knew it I was 30,000 feet in the air on my way back to St. Louis.

Sarah and I on top of Copper Mountain. Kevin went with us and took this great picture.

Gnarly loves walking around Wash Park.

One of the first things I did when I got back into St. Louis was to take the Pact Test. In order to fight fire on federal land, one has to carry 45 pounds for 3 miles while walking in under 45 minutes. It was tougher than I thought, leaving me with really sore shins and calves. I was in the first group to go and I was the first to finish in just over 41 minutes. I thought that was fast, until other members, practically ran the three miles and did it in 34 minutes. I found out its easier to run with the weight compared to walking, but the test really tests to see if one can actually walk 45 minutes with the weight.

Some people came out in the rain and watched us.

A few people getting ready to carry 45 pounds of batteries.

Then the next week I went back to Peck Ranch. I spend a lot of time there maintaining a fire line, it's mindless, but it has to be done or we would never be able to burn anything. We throw a lot of sticks around, move some large logs, and walk all around trying to get burn units ready to burn.

Before picture. Lots of wood need to be moved away from the fire line

After picture. No sparks can fly from wood that isn't there. That's one safe fire line.

Then it was the time for the best weekend ever. I surprised Sarah for our three year anniversary with a last minute surprise out to St. Louis. It was all planned out, and Sarah didn't know she was flying out to St. Louis until about 2 hours before her flight. Thanks Neil.

While she was here, we did all the tourist activities. We visited the Arch, the Budweiser plant, tried to go into the Schafly brewery, City Museum, Soulard Farmer's Market, and the free and awesome St. Louis Zoo.

Sarah and I at the arch

Sarah looking west. She loved the city.

Sarah at the zoo, totally fascinated by the penguins

Rocking out in the Bud truck. I told her she looked good in a truck.

Spudz. Good old spudz!

First tour of the morning. And we went on the short tour.

Sarah, you can't take hone all the dogs that you see

I had a great weekend, but Sarah had to go home. To make it worse, the next 2 days I was in St. Louis cutting and removing honey suckle. Honey suckle is the worst plant tree in the history of mankind. It just grows where ever and take over the land. But things got much better on that Wednesday when everyone went to Potosi, Missouri for the federal chainsaw class. Taking this class allows us to cut on federal land, aka, Forest Service land. I got my A classification sawyership after cutting down, and doing a great on my tree. If I hadn't fallen and scratched up my whole leg the day before, I would have cut more, but my leg was killing me thanks to my fire boots.

Everyone in the woods getting chapped up and saws ready

Mark scouting up his tree.

Everyone watching Andrew on his test.

 The next week I went to Eminence, Missouri to work on more fire line. This place is great, I really do love serving there. We do more than just move logs, we get to cut down snags, blow leaves, and really cut down anything that may be a hazard when it comes to fire.

Andrew trying really hard to start a backpack blower.

Grace giving a lesson on how to carry a backpack and a blower. Koala bear style she calls it.

Lisa filling up on gas in the middle of no where.

Lisa and Grace blowing the line behind me. Three blowers can make a 8 foot wide fire line in no time.

Before, tons of leaves.

After three blowers made there way up the hill. Leaves moved off the fire line.

Hopefully I have time to update this blog more often in the next few weeks. My neighborhood is swarming right now a week and a half before Mardi Gras, so I can only imagine what I will stumble across. Until next time, see you all later.

Shamucas

End of Joplin, Beginning of Conservation Work

Hey everyone,


    Sorry for such a long time between posts. Towards the end of my time in Joplin, things got super crazy and very stressful. I had to have a few of my WIBs fired for showing up after lunch intoxicated. That lead to a series of events where I had to get in contact with my WIB supervisors and tell them to get their small teams to be better productive and to actually get something accomplished. But other than that, I very much loved my time down in Joplin. I felt that no matter what, every day the ERT was able to do something productive.

    On one Friday in particular, I was dropping off tools at sites when I came to a house where a group of nursing students were to break up, remove, and put in a new sidewalk. Whenever I had the chance to hit something, I took full advantage of it. I pulled up and saw the students working and they needed some assistance. They weren't have the best of luck with breaking up the concrete, so I took over and went to town on the sidewalk. There is something to be said about how much fun it is to break things.

Nursing students trying to break the sidewalk up

Removing the concrete after I got there

    After things got broken up, I found out that the volunteers had to leave. Unfortunately, the homeowner already had the cement ordered and it was on its way. I used my Nextel and called the office looking to see if there were any volunteers available, but they was none. And right then, the office found out they had a deadline to meet on the demo board, so I couldn't recruit any of my ERT friends. I then realized that I would be pouring all the cement with the homeowner all by ourselves. We were able to do it, I learned a lot, and it looked really good. When I was done, the homeowner was so very happy and started crying and thanking me for sticking around and helping him get this done. The only thing I could do was to give him a huge hug and tell him that we were there for him.

Finished project

The homeowner put in a cross

   A few weeks later, I remembered the homeowner told me his birthday was that week, so I bought him a cookie cake and brought a few of my ERT friends and gave him a little surprise birthday party. It was nice to see him again, and he was as thankful as ever. He loved us.

   Like I said earlier, I got really busy and didn't take many pictures of what I was doing. I got a team of NCCC AmeriCorps volunteers from Denver who came to Joplin to help us out. They helped me out a lot, I put them right to work in the field as site supervisors to make sure nothing got out of control.

One of the last projects I was involved in was gutting a house in preparation for demolishing it. It was rainy and cold, but for about a week, I had volunteers out there working really hard. Sometimes I forget that in these houses, people use to actually live there. This house was abandoned after the storm, leaving everything still inside. I found a lot of things that just made me sad and realize how bad the storm was.

This was one of my favorite views. I finally got a picture of it on a rainy day. This is in Duquesne, just East of Joplin.

Bird's nest in the food cabinet.

Gutting

Volunteers from Texas who took down a shed finishing taking apart the roof.

Illinois students gutting the house

One of the other projects that we always did was raking properties so that we could clear the property off our database. Now days, that is practically all we do. These are pretty boring, but I get out and help every once in a while. The property needs to be able to be mow-able / seed-able.

My volunteers. My NCCC is to the right, wearing the black coat.

Action picture! It was really cold out and snowing.

95% done. but it looks great.

    Another day, when it was snowing out, a group of volunteers and I helped Habitat for Humanity lay sod at 5 houses. It was yet another thing that I didn't know how to do, but I figured it out pretty quickly.

Man that looks really good.

   Last week was my first week on conservation. We went down to southern Missouri to Peck Ranch. It is a wildlife refuge that is literally in the middle of nowhere. I stayed in a trailer for the week, which was really nice, but I didn't have phone service to call Sarah. The only place that I could get service was 2 miles away up on top of a hill that is called Phone Booth Hill.

  At Peck Ranch, we maintained a fire line so that in the spring, they can do a prescribed burn. We literally picked up any stick within 60 feet of the road, and carried it further away from the road. I've never done so much back and forth walking in my life. It snowed one night leaving us a cold, wet mess the next day. However, it was fun to drive in though.

Road in the middle of nowhere Peck Ranch. Spent all week on the left side throwing logs around.

Look at that park job.

Looking awesome.

   Well thats about it, as I am writing this on Sunday evening, I found out I am going back to Peck Ranch in the morning. I'll take more pictures, or at least try to. Until later.

Love - Shamucas

Joplin

Hey!

Here I am in Joplin and finally had time to write a post. It has been crazy busy down here trying to get settled down and organized. The day before I left, I took the test to drive AmeriCorps cars which has it pros and cons. I get to drive which is great, but I must drive a lot for what we do in Joplin. My day usually starts out at 7 am by communicating with the other 5 ERT members on what type of jobs are being done that day and what tools are needed. I fill up the 15 passenger van with all the tools needed plus more tools in case throughout the day other jobs are started and need tools. I then drive all around Joplin dropping of tools for sites, with sites consisting of volunteers either gutting and salvaging a house, completely demolishing a house, raking a property that was already demolished, to other random jobs. That takes a while because most sites are in the destruction zone where the tornado had gone through, and there are no street signs. The city went through and painted the names on the streets, but it's hard to see the paint until you're right on top of the paint.

17th and something, but it's really hard to see

After dropping of the tools, I go and serve with field WIB workers. The WIB workers are contracted through the state after an emergency to do a variety of activities. ERT has some WIB workers working on removing debris on large properties that homeowners asked us to assist them with. WIB workers are unemployed who are contracted 6 months at a time. I act as their supervisor, but its hard to supervise when I can only be there for a few hours a day. Most workers are nice and want to work, but a few are really lazy and don't want to do anything but sit and gossip with each other. The past two weeks, we have been cutting trees that were severely damaged from the storm and bucking them up into fire wood all over the city.

WIB site after 50 of them spent a week de-limbing, bucking, and raking up the area.

Last week, Extreme Makeover Home Edition was in Joplin construction 7 houses in 7 days. We tried to get on tv and give AmeriCorps St. Louis a presence at the revealing of one of the houses. The reveal was done live on ABC at 7 eastern, so we woke up at 4 am and went to a bus boarding place to be shuttled to the house site by 5 to get a good seat. There were a ton of people there, but somehow we managed to push through some people to get in the second row. We saw all the co-hosts of the show and all the cameras. The most exciting part was being in the crowd when the crowd started yelling MOVE THAT BUS.

Andrew and Clare so excited to be up at 4am.

I yelled, "Michael, on 3 smile upwards to the sky" and when I got to three, this is what he did.

Getting out of the limo

Click on the link below to see me from the other side of the camera. 9 seconds in until the end, look for me to the right of Ty. I look like Wolverine.
http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/video/big-reveal-extreme-makeover-14816520


Extreme also worked on a community park that was completely destroyed and made it look amazing. They added a new pond, a new play set, a new basketball court, and a nice memorial to all the volunteers, especially AmeriCorps St. Louis.

My team around our bronze helmet at the park.

The park with the destroyed hospital in the background. It was moved 4 inches off its foundation. That bracelet to the right is what a lot of people wear to remember May 22.

Plaque mentioning AmeriCorps

I serve with the WIB workers until noon and then I have to move tools from one site to another. Sometimes, when I feel like I want to break something and help our great volunteers I grab a sledge hammer and start swinging away. But most times, the volunteers are having way too much and I just let them swing away. One day when I remembered to bring my camera with me, I was with a group of 13 years olds who were gutting a house. It was amazing to see how much fun they had and how much they actually got done. They gutted the whole house for the most part saving the homeowner a week of his own time and effort.

Before I gave them a lesson on how to swing away.

The house after a few hours.

There's a house that was right in the middle of the destruction zone where the homeowner has donated the house to volunteers and the city plans on taking to a museum. It is really quite amazing to see all the people who have come and signed their names and wrote messages.

Outside looking in

Looking outside

 Another day, we worked with the producers from extreme and they filmed up removing a house's broken up foundation. There was about 30 people there with the film crew, but when the film crew left, so did the people. Us 5 ERT guys stayed back and hauled half of the foundation to the curb by ourselves.

Hey extreme volunteers who only wanted to be on camera and not help.

Chad, Wooly Mammoth getting mic'd up for his interview

ERT and two other volunteers removing all the cement

Last Friday I was near where the Extreme team was constructing 7 houses helping an elderly lady fix her fence, when Michael from extreme walked over and started talking to us. It was very weird. Some Walmart executives were volunteering with me got some pictures of me. Warning, my hair makes me look like a hippy. To be fair, I took off my helmet to talk to him.

I drive around 50 to 80 miles around Joplin everyday. I have seen some of the saddest and most heartbreaking things ever here. Whether it's talking to an elderly homeowner who lost everything and can't physically remove debris and rebuild, to a house that still stands but has been condemned, to driving down Main street and seeing the actual path of where the tornado went. Everything was wiped out, leaving nothing but piles of debris and trees.

Driving south down Main street, looking towards where the Tornado went.

20th and Main. The Tornado went right across the road and took out all everything in it's path, businesses and neighborhoods.

Not too sure where this is, but theres nothing left.

On the perimeter of the tornado, where some things survived.

Looking west. 6 miles long, and a mile wide of destruction

22nd and Pearl after the tornado with Pickle

Same spot before the storm

Here's what I was for Halloween. I'm with two girls who get paid by the state to work in our office. Unfortunately this Halloween, I didn't hand out candy or even see one trick or treater because I was in the office until really late.

Pumpkin patch kids. We were the only ones who had a costume at work

They tried to be tall like me by cheating and standing on chairs, but I was still taller, almost.

That's it for now. I'll try to take more action pictures of what I'm doing, but its hard to do when I'm out in the field picking up and throwing trees around. I'll be home for Thanksgiving to see Sarah and my family so everyone get excited for that. Until later.

Shamucas