Sandy Clean Up!

A couple weeks after Hurricane Sandy hit on November 17, 2012 I had an opportunity to go down to Rockaway NY to help with the clean up. 

There were many signs like the above saying "Patriots welcome looters will be shot"

You can see think piles of sand washed up on the lawn. 

Car was washed up on the sidewalk. 

We helped an elderly gentleman who was a music teacher for brass instruments. He also played for many symphonies across the US. His Garage and house was full of brass instruments. The saddest thing I saw was scores and scores of classical music destroyed from the water. They were all moldy and falling apart when we got to them and the only option was to throw them away. 

Another group from another organization came by and helped us for a little while to clean out the heavy stuff in the Garage. 

The neighbor talking with the other group thanking them for the help they provided to him. 

Boxes of pieces of instruments for parts to fix the brass instruments. 

You can see how far up the mud goes. Above the first floor windows. 

Almost the entire garage was covered in the flooded water. 

The basement was full of mud. We had to wait for the mission President to bring a generator and a sump pump so we could clean out the basement. We also didn't have any light down there so until we got the generator we couldn't do much because we couldn't see. Electricity was completely lost. For this house the electric panel is in the basement and it was destroyed in the flood and the entire wiring will need to be redone in the house before it will have electricity again.   

Damage to the first floor. It will have to be gutted and redone. 

There was so many old tools and machines this old man had collected over the years. 

Everything that had to be thrown away was taken to the street and the piles just got bigger and bigger. 

Lots and lots of instruments. 

Here is our group. The man with the beard in the back is Paul the son of the gentleman who's house we were cleaning. He also plays for the symphony, and on occasion the Boston Pops. The other guy without a yellow vest on is a friend of the guy we were helping. In yellow vests from left to right. 

Justin Larson, Martha Paxton, Ashlee Burgener, Ruth Checkets, Tiffany Lyon 

More cars damaged and destroyed. 

We had another group of people stop by and ask us if we needed more help. They were up from Florida wanting to help. We sent them over to another house where we had some people working on gutting it so they could help out as well. 

It was great to see how so many people from all over came together to help out and work to make the job lighter for all those who were effected. To imagine the thousands of dollars we were able to help people save by providing them our services. 

I went down with my stake. We had about 50+ people who went down on a bus and then others went in a carpool. We had about 120+ people from our stake go down and work for the day. On our drive home there was a pretty sunset. I wasn't in a great place to be able to take a good picture.