I wrote this piece shortly after the flood two years ago this month.
I don’t know a single thing about Mindy Fletcher. That’s not
even her real name. What I do know is that she had an office in a building in
Loveland, Colorado close to where the Big Thompson River overflowed its banks
in the recent flood event, pouring into Mindy’s small office to a level of 12
inches or more.
No big deal, you say. Only one of thousands of places that
experienced this flooding. True. But though I’ve never met Mindy and I don’t
know what her job was except that she worked at a school for at-risk kids, in
the last couple of days, I’ve come to know her in my mind.
I wasn’t sure how I could be helpful when I showed up last
Sunday afternoon, responding to a call to help clean out a school for at-risk
kids during the coffee hour after the 9 a.m. service at Foothills Unitarian
Church in Fort Collins. I worked with
at-risk kids for 15 years. I had to go. I brought along boots and rubber
gloves, but was assigned to sort and pack undamaged books headed for storage.
Nothing dirty about that job.
In a few minutes I realized that here in the parking area
was a cohesive group who’d been sorting books for a while and had taken
possession of that job. I really wasn’t needed. So I went to my car, slipped on
my boots, grabbed my rubber gloves and headed into the dim building where a
layer of superfine mud spread across the entire lower level.
Recovery workers were using squeegees and big shovels to
corral the stuff, slop it into wheelbarrows and trundle it out of the building.
It was pretty much an endless enterprise as it seemed the more they carted it
away, the more the stuff continued to seep onto the floor from unknown sources
within the partially destroyed walls.
I found Mindy’s small office a bit away from the main part
of the building. No one was in there, so I figured it could use some help. I’m
a rotten volunteer even though I’m not opposed to hard work. I get frustrated
with standing around. I’m not particularly good at visiting, and I’m not very
good at taking orders. It’s hard to admit, but I like to work alone.
I attacked Mindy’s office one tiny step at a time. First I
scraped out enough of the mud layer so that I could walk rather than skate
across the floor. Then I began extracting every mud-caked item and tossing it
into a bin. When the bin was full, I hauled it out to the sidewalk where a pile
of ruined stuff was growing at a astronomical rate. And then I did it again,
and again.
Stacks of snack food from candy bars to crackers, powdered
lemonade to Ramen noodles went, along with the contents of desk and credenza
drawers—soggy papers, an assortment of office supplies, packets of testing
materials that I knew were incredibly expensive to purchase. Ouch. But this
part was easy. There was no salvaging this soaked and stinky stuff. I did find
a few tools I figured could be washed and saved and a whole box of scissors
encased in mud-covered plastic that might still be useable.
Throwing away the saturated stuff was easy. “Yeah,” one
seasoned worker said to me as the pile on the sidewalk, now topped with pieces
of ruined furniture including office chairs, desks and tables continued to
grow, “The longer you do this, the easier it gets to throw things away.”
As I moved up from floor level, I had a harder time. My frugality gene kicked in and I began to
debate: This lamp could be saved, but it would need a mammoth cleaning job.
Toss. No time for that.
The incredible tangle of cords that power our electronic
devices take on a new look when they’ve been lying in chocolate pudding-style goop
for days. Finding where they lead, where they unplug, and winding them into a
reasonably transportable conglomeration—a frustrating undertaking. And in some
cases the machines they powered had sat high and dry enough to be saved.
“Take the stuff that’s still good upstairs,” I was told.
“We’re trying to keep mud off the floors up there, if possible,” Yeah. Right. I must have made 50-plus
trips up those now mud-crusted stairs depositing boxes on either side of a long
narrow hallway, to be “dealt with later.”
Temporarily freed from my mud-caked rubber gloves, as I
filled boxes from shelves and desk drawers that were above flood level, I began
to think about Mindy. Where was she right now?
Maybe she couldn’t face the music just yet. As I packed away her small
mementos, her family photos, coffee grinder, and tea bags, I began to feel as
if I were invading her privacy and at the same time, she began to come to life
for me.
I wanted to ask her if she wanted to save this or that. I
wanted to tell her that I was trying hard to keep her things together, putting items
from each drawer all together so she’d have an easier time sorting out. I
wanted her to know that the signed checks I’d found on her desk were safe; that
I’d delivered them to the school’s finance person.
Just before 5 p.m. on Sunday I called it a day and went home
with a quite artistic mud design adorning my jeans. I decided not to wash them
just yet. Monday morning I put them back on and headed south to Loveland even
though I only had a two-hour window to work. I only experienced the “volunteer”
syndrome for a few moments, standing around waiting for someone to come and
unlock the building. They turned out to be good minutes when I learned about
one young woman volunteer who went to Haiti for a month, stayed for 10, and has
been hooked on volunteer flood recovery ever since. These days she was sleeping
on an air mattress in a nearby YMCA. “Yes.” She said to my questions. “They
feed us and house us. I’m addicted to this job.”
The doors clicked open and I returned to “my” little office.
Hmm. Was I getting possessive of this space I was determined to get completely
cleaned out? Yep. I resumed carrying box after box upstairs, saving the life of
their contents. After searching in vain
for a step-stool, I begged someone with a few inches on me to reach the stuff I
couldn’t, stacked high on the top shelves.
At last every desk drawer, shelf and cabinet was empty. All
that remained was removing the damaged furniture. I knew I couldn’t do that
alone. Along came amazingly strong Jackie and with only some puny help from me,
wrestled every piece out and onto the sidewalk pile which had been magically
removed overnight but was growing fast once again.
It had taken some time before I’d realized that there was
carpet beneath all the mud. Carpet, that I now realized, was glued to the
floor. With the judicious use of a crowbar around the edges, it came up quite
easily, the glue having been softened by days of saturation. It got trundled
away on a dolly to be deposited in the “the pile.”
I had to leave mid-morning. Mindy still hadn’t showed up,
and I drove away still wondering about this person I will never meet. How long had
she worked at the school? What was her job? Was she off somewhere this Monday
morning teaching the kids in a makeshift building somewhere? Where does she
live? Did her home suffer from the flood as well?
I’m too curious for my own good. Probably going to go back
tomorrow.
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