The Hansen Family: Houston Cleanup

In early September a HUGE hurricane went through Huston TX. I have a lot of clients in the area and a few of the guys from my office wanted to go down and do some flood clean up. We had been watching what it looked like on the news and hearing the stories, but nothing could have prepared us for how much damage the storm had done.

While we were there we mucked out 3 houses and spent a couple of days doing service at a Methodist church. We were able to get set up with the LDS group, Helping Hands, through the Tedjamulia's who I knew from our old Springville ward. The Helping Hands website had thousands of houses that needed help cleaning out after the storm. We lined up some appointments in the areas where we were planning to be. The 1st day we went to a pretty nice neighborhood that had just been opened back up. The flood water had taken longer to recede from the area and the families had just gotten back in. We worked for about 4 hours in one house but decided to leave when we realized that some of the other people there helping were paid workers. We went to our next house and worked to clean out the home of a widow who's husband had died of cancer the year before. She had lived in the house for like 30 years and EVERYTHING was gone. We had to take out all the furniture, clothes, decorations, appliances, ect. Then we pulled all the carpets and hardwood floors, followed by the trim, and then all of the walls and insulation up to the ceiling. It was so heavy and the smell was indescribable. That night we threw all of the clothes we had worn away the minute we got back to our hotel.

The next 2 days we did service with Caleb Little, a client of ours, at his church. We took off a little early to go out to a rural area to a house/trailer that had been flooded in 14 feet of water. They had done the 2nd floor but had not yet even stepped foot in the basement. The saddest part of their story was that they had just finished redoing the basement from a previous flood last year. They would not get compensated for that work, nor would they get reimburse for rebuilding this time. They, like the vast majority of people down there, did not have flood insurance, and FEMA only paid a small fraction of the cost. We of course threw away all of our clothes that day too and came home with empty suitcases.

It was a great opportunity to do some good. I'd go again tomorrow for sure. Despite the fact that I got a bad bacteria from being in the nasty water for a few days and ended up being sick for a couple of weeks.