North Carolina – ERT – Oct. 27 – Nov. 2, 2024

We are well over 160 completed jobs!  Our volunteers come from the Lancaster area of PA, one from a small town in VA, and one from the Washington DC area.  Paul Jutzi and Cindy Sanderson are still here; mid-week they were joined by Steve Haskin, from Pennsylvania.

While Paul & Cindy are heading home at the end of this week, Steve will stay and work on assessing needs and requests in an effort to have things set up for the work crews to come back for the week of November 10^thand beyond.

There are still numerous trees that need to be taken down/trimmed/removed and our volunteers have been busy doing this work, but many times the residents need to wait for direction from their insurance company.

The urgent needs are slowing down a bit, but there is still so many residents that are experiencing hard conditions.  Many in this area are still without water and/or electricity; there are still individuals and small communities that are landlocked.  In some cases, they have made a makeshift driveway around what used to be a bridge; while others now have to walk across a foot-bridge and are then picked up by friends/relatives at the road to go to stores, doctors, etc.

Conditions here vary – in some areas, it’s almost as if nothing happened.  Then you travel just a couple of miles and the damage is hard to believe.  The hillsides had mud-slides that took out a wide path of trees, and houses.  The roads are only passable, one vehicle at a time, because half of the road surface is gone – and these are main roads!

But, through all this, the people of this area are resilient and strong.  So many times our volunteers are thanked for being here & helping everyone, even if we haven’t been able to do the work they, themselves, need done.  We have also received notes left on our vehicles, emails have been sent, or a hand-shake, and/or hug.