By Larry Agee | Co-Founder & Executive Director
DAUSA LA and TX teams Arrived just a couple days after the storm passed with Backhoe & Chainsaw Teams, Rescue Boat, and Muck and Gut Crews. We had three trailer station in Florida on a permanent basis. The Central Florida team was busy for 2 1/2 weeks helping flood victims, rescuing survivors, and removing debris form roads and houses. Many did not here of the Central FL flooding problems but our team was there working hard everyday! The FL east coast team sent their 2 trailers to Ft Myers within the first week to be used by Rotary clubs and the Rotary District Disaster Committee. The Rotary District 6960 Gov. Nominee (Kelsey Mitchell) opened up her house and other Rotarians did also for our teams!
In the Ft Myers area the backhoe and chainsaw teams immediately started working in the Harlem Heights a community where many do not have insurance, basing operations in their community center. The staff welcomed DAUSA and put us to work helping their neighbors, removing trees off houses and roads. The muck and gut team started in another community helping elderly residents and then moved to Harlem Heights also as the community is close to the land fall area and went under water. Our CA and MO teams showed up who have extensive Muck and Gut experience in Non profit and retired from 30 years of private restoration work. A week later Idaho Team showed to join the effort.
Working with the local Rotary district we started training their Team Captains in Muck and Gut procedures and then sent them back to their communities of Englewood, Port Charlotte North Port Etc. to manage Volunteers there. By doing this we became a force multiplier for the Rotarians and the community. Many days we had 5 separate communities having teams working in them.
The Backhoe and Chainsaw teams, teamed up with a local church. We had met them working on a house in Harlem Heights, and they called for help with a number of their elderly members and work on 2 churches that were serving their communities. They had distribution point setup and were cooking meals for the community.
By Working closely with the Rotary District (a community Service Org) and local Churches we tapped into community institutional knowledge and hit the ground running not spending a week figuring out where to work or base out of.
We continue to work with both, as we have muck and gut team rotating in throughout the rest of the year and the chainsaw team is headed back in Nov after a short break.
When the recovery phase is over we will send our rebuild teams in to help the survivors who fall through the cracks of FEMA and insurance or get no assistance at all (yes that does happen). DAUSA will helping this community long term and we appreciate your continued donation to keep our teams in the field
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