By Chris Finch | Director, Lutheran Disaster Response
Lutheran Disaster Response, a program of Lutheran Social Services of the Virgin Islands, has continued rebuilding hurricane damaged roofs through May 2020. Although the twin Category 5 hurricanes Irma and Maria hit us in a 2 week span almost three years ago in September 2017, there are still numerous homes that have not been repaired. Many of these damaged structures belong to low income senior citizens and persons with disabilities. These are the groups we have focused on helping.
Lutheran Disaster Response uses volunteers, both local and from the states, who donate their labor as builders. Our work has ranged from simple repairs to complete replacement of damaged roofs. As needed, we replace windows and doors, install simple kitchens, make sure a bathroom is working and build wheelchair ramps. All of this work is to accomplish our standard of ensuring we leave homes "safe and dry and sanitary and functional". Our goal is that any roof we work on will survive future hurricanes.
The funding for GlobalGiving and others has helped buy building materials. This has been a Godsend. We have been blessed throughout this program that we have been able to prioritize homeowners based on their needs and urgency and not on their ability to afford construction supplies. For a volunteer rebuilding program, that is a great situation to have.
We began hosting volunteers in June 2018. Through May 2020 we have been blessed with the efforts of 919 volunteers. Most of the volunteers worked with us for at least two weeks. Numerous people came back 3 and 4 times over the last two years volunteering two weeks or longer each time.
Unfortunately, we are now closing. The pandemic with travel restrictions and stay at home policies led to the cancellation of all of our stateside volunteer teams for April, May and June. It also made it impossible to recruit teams for later in the summer as no one knew when they would feel safe enough for volunteer mission trip travel. People were concerned that upon their return home, they would need to quarantine themselves for two weeks. Our hopes for a resurgence of volunteers in the fall were diminished with national groups telling us that they had lost so many volunteers and were so behind in their projects that they could not take on new commitments.
Our last stateside volunteer group arrived in mid-March and stayed for three weeks into April. This group of 11 volunteers included five volunteers on their fourth mission trip helping us and three on their third trip. Groups like this are special. They have worked on St Croix enough that they have learned the local building codes and have formed a strong relationship with our program and staff. They were able to put roofs on two houses while they were here and repair the rafters on a third house which we finished sheathing with local volunteers.
A few days ago we completed work on our 71st home. This home belonged to a single mother with four young daughters. Since September 2017 they have been getting wet inside the home every time it rained. Now they will be dry.
Some statistics illustrate the work. We have hosted 919 volunteers in 59 teams donating 53,696 hours of building. Sixty-eight percent of our volunteers (628) volunteered for at least two weeks. We had 170 youth volunteers, eighteen percent of our total. We hope we started inspiring the next generation of disaster responders. Cruzan Rum and its parent company Beam Suntory, a major donor to GlobalGiving for Virgin Islands recovery, sent us nine corporate volunteer groups.
Although every house was different, most of our time has been spent on major repairs to significantly damaged homes. Of the 53,000 hours of volunteer time, almost 36,000 hours (72%+) were spent on major repairs and another 5,000 hours on homes that required just slightly less work. This is the work we are most proud of. The transformation from a badly damaged and mostly missing roof to a gleaming well built roof restores hope for homeowners, engenders pride for volunteers and we hope, fulfils the expectations of GlobalGivings supporters.
By Chris Finch | Director, Lutheran Disaster Response
By Chris Finch | Director, Lutheran Disaster Response
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