An Open Letter to our Readers

The time has come. Maple 4 is graduating November 17, 2011. This means no more projects, no more briefings, no more van rides and especially no more PT.

The team has completed over 16,000 hours of community service work in Infrastructure Improvement, Environmental Stewardship and Conservation, Urban and Rural Development, Energy Conservation, and Natural and Other Disaster Relief. The team created a quarter mile and maintained three miles of trail in Cincinnati, OH. They provided park maintenance to four parks in Vinton, IA. When the team went to Marquette, MI they worked with over 100 children under 17 and improved a day care in order to be state accredited. In Minot, ND they helped 31 homeowners recover some part of their homes that were flooded in June 2011.

This is just from one team. There are 18 other teams in the North Central Region that served at the same time in Class 17 and many more across the country.

We really enjoyed working on the blog. We hope that you enjoyed reading it. We hope that it gave an intimate insight into an AmeriCorps NCCC team.


With Love,

Maple 4

This is it

So we have served our time in Minot. It was a long two-day journey, but we made it. Since driving from Minot to Vinton is more than 10 hours, NCCC rules say that we must stop somewhere for the night. For this project, we were given a single budget for a hotel on the way to Minot and for one on the way back. Since we stayed in a less than spectacular hotel in Fargo on the way there, we had a little more to spend on the way back, allowing us to stay in Bloomingdale, MN, just minutes from Mall of America and Minneapolis (they even had a shuttle!).

Now we are back on campus doing closure activities. Many of these are similar to what we do during project transitions, like community meetings, project debriefs, team check-ins with unit leaders, rep role meetings and tool/equipment check-ins.

At the end of our round 4 debrief, Greg does a rap closure.


This is closure, though; it’s the end of the year of service! That means that we have to make it special. At the beginning of the year, we did physical fitness baselines, so of course we have to do baselines again to see how we’ve improved (hopefully!). We’re having a few meetings to learn about our opportunities after AmeriCorps. Some college credit test practice and testing is going on. We’re having another Cultural Coffeehouse session (talent show) and an AmeriProm.

One thing I am majorly excited about is the Unit-Palooza. Previously, it’s been referred to the AmeriLympics. No one has released very many details about it yet, but it’s supposed to be the ultimate team vs. team competition. At the beginning of the year, every team received “Legacy words of wisdom” from their respective teams from Class 16. Old Maple 4 said they “never lost anything, ever,” so we’re going to work hard to live up to that expectation.

Speaking of “Legacy,” we get to make a team flag and get to paint a team wall mural.

Our “wall” mural is actually on a pillar in middle of the room. We are very happy about this as it allows us to work a little more creatively. I’m not going to give anything away, so if you want to see our mural, you’ll just have to stop by the Vinton NCCC campus. :) But if you want a sneak peek.

The two nights before graduation is an awards banquet to recognize certain accomplishments in the Corps, specifically how Gaby and I broke the campus record for most media hits this year (50!).

Every day is coming up faster than the one before it. It’s fun and scary at the same time. Just as fast as we were all put in the same team, we’ll be thrust apart. I’m really going to miss my team, but I’m happy to have all of my memories.

~Phil

Blockin the Mold

Personal Protective Equipment, or PPE, as it's called, is the stuff campus issues NCCC members to protect us on the worksite. That includes gloves, a helmet, and safety glasses, earplugs, coveralls, steel toed boots, and rain gear. During our last few projects, we've used some of these items off and on, but Minot's been the first time that I've seen all of this Personal Protective Equipment used in concert. Wearing nearly all of that stuff at once, on top of your normal uniform looks something like this:

Diana and Hillary ready to go in the basement

Why is Diana (on the left) wearing so much gear, you ask? Because this is what it looks like in a basement, power washer on blast behind you, contaminated water splashing off walls that were once covered in sewage, pieces of drywall shooting out of hidden cracks in the wall. It's foggy, dark, and difficult to see, even with a string of lights plugged into our generator.

Power washing a basement ceiling

Mucking out a house

Removing floorboards to expose wet interior floor to dry

~Darcy
Sometimes it can be a pain to put on all the gear. With enough PPE for 9 people thrown into the back of our van, it's confusing to sort through in the morning. And because of contaminants, we have to wash our 2 sets of coveralls every other night so that we have a clean one each morning. It's worth it though, to keep the team safe. I certainly don't want a nail in the foot or mold in my lungs. And I usually try to keep the amount of poo water I'm covered in to a minimum, so the rain gear is my friend.
Some jobs are demo houses, where we demolish flooring, rip out drywall and nails; remove hot water heaters, duct work, and that sort of thing, to prep them for future power washing. When working in those types of houses, we'll wear an N95 dust mask.
Our sanitizing process involves carefully spraying every piece of wood in the house from about 6 inches away, then hitting it again with a soapy Simple Green solution and finally rinsing. Lastly we mix bleach and water together in a sprayer and go over all of the wood again to kill any remaining mold. Rain gear is a must when bleaching or your clothes underneath can get ruined. I learned this the hard way. (sad face) Then you've got the muck & gut houses where we shovel out basements full of debris that have not been touched since the flood.

Those jobs require us to wear P100 masks that filter out junk in the air and keep us from getting sick due to mold and possible asbestos.

My First Root Canal

During project round three, I chipped my tooth while swinging a hammer. It really didn’t hurt that bad when it happened, but I knew later the pain would come. At the end of the round, my tooth was in crazy pain, but I was too afraid to go to the dentist.

When fourth round came, the pain was so bad I had to start using Ora-gel. The Ora-gel helped a little bit, but the pain was unbelievable. It was so bad I almost took some sick days off of work, but I kept working like always. Everyone on our team kept telling me to go to the dentist but I was seriously scared. So one day I got tired of the pain and made an appointment at Greer and Greer Dentist Office.

Greg and Dr. Tom

When I went to the dentist, Dr. Tom told me I needed a root canal and he wanted to fix it for me. He set up another appointment and told me to get ready.

I went back a couple days later and was scared for my life. Everyone kept telling me that it “wouldn’t be so bad” and “don’t worry.” When I was waiting in the lobby, there were kids in there making fun of me. They were trying to make me even more scared, but they were actually kind of funny and made me laugh a little bit.

Greg getting drilled
Dr. Tom called me to the back and started on my root canal. Darcy was in there with me to provide me a little bit of company. I also watched a little bit of The Price is Right on TV.

Long story short, I had fun with Dr. Tom and Darcy, my tooth doesn’t hurt anymore, and the dentist isn’t bad after all.

~Greg

Generosity

Generosity is a major part of being in AmeriCorps National Civilian Community Corps. You join to help people, plain and simple. Maybe you do it for the education award as well, but you can make four times that in a minimum wage job over the same time period. Anyway, the point is that AmeriCorps NCCC Corps members are generous in giving of themselves and their time and effort, and this isn't a one-way street.

The people we're working alongside with at Lutheran Disaster Response are amazingly generous. The volunteers here pay their own way to get here, and are provided with housing (usually in a church like we are), breakfast, lunch and dinner and shower passes to the local YMCA. There's a steady flow of volunteers for October, but as it gets colder there are fewer volunteers lined up. There's still a great need for volunteers as there are still a lot of people and homes in need. One volunteer we're working with in particular will be here until Thanksgiving, continuing his volunteering weeks after we've left and even after we've graduated and left AmeriCorps NCCC. His name is Jeff and he's our site supervisor. We work alongside him and get things done for those in need in the Minot area.

Some of the team with volunteer Jeff

He's had previous experience power washing, which is what we're mainly doing right now, and brought with him the knowledge of an oscillating ceramic super genius power washing attachment of awesomeness. With this new attachment it's possible to start and finish power washing, soaping, rinsing, and bleaching a house in a day (depending on the size). That's pretty darn nifty, as it was taking two days before. We're now able to help more people, at a faster pace because this one person decided to come help out. If you have the time and the ability to come out here just think of how many people you could positively affect, through your knowledge, physical labor and generosity.

~Diana

Maple 4-A Series of Events

Gaby, Hillary and Christina with Fred who volunteered with us from Seattle

The girls on Maple 4 mucked and gutted a house with a volunteer named Fred a couple weeks ago. We took out a bathroom, shelves, flooring, drywall, and walls. We also had a chance to try using a sledgehammer and a saws-all. This house was also the first house we got the chance to return to and sanitize it as well. It is now ready to be buttoned up for winter.

Taking a break to enjoy some Gatorade that Fred made us

Lutheran Disaster Response, our sponsor, received a donation of 4 osculating heads for the power washers. This head for the power washer is a beast; it takes the dirt and mold off the studs much easier than the normal head. It cuts down the time it takes us to finish a house to about a third of what it was before. We can now sanitize 2-3 houses a day if we split into two teams of four.

The town we live in, Granville, had four town cats, probably strays that roam the streets. There is a black and white cat, a grey and white cat and a grey tiger cat. I have tried getting all three cats to come over and let me pet them, one hid under a car, another in the alley way and the last stayed by a tree and stared at me. I usually am standing in the street or on the sidewalk cooing and calling for them; they ignore me completely and seem a little nervous. They don’t let me get too close. They are all so cute though, I wish I could take them home. The grey and white one looks exactly like Henry, my cat at home.

Cat down the street

We finally found a herd of buffalo. They live over the train tracks in town and down the street a couple miles into the country. We pulled the van over and walked up the fence of their enclosure. At first they all stood about 20-30 feet away from us and stood there staring us down suspiciously. Finally after about 10 minutes the lead buffalo started to walk closer to get a better look at us. We took some pictures but made sure not to get too close. The last time I saw a herd of buffalo was when I was 7 in my hometown, a local man had some. We used to go and feed them grass through the fence, until one day one of the buffalo horned me in the eyebrow through the fence.

Maple 4 also received our first support vehicle, so now in addition to our big red van; we have another dark blue one. It’s lucky we got it, because Sam ended up breaking his ankle, so we have to use it to get him to work every day, without it we wouldn’t have enough room because he has to use a whole row of seats to put his leg up.

Lucille, our contact at the church where we live, had the team over to her house for dinner. She made us an amazing meal; there was turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, green beans, two different salads, apple pie and much more. It was like a Thanksgiving dinner and delicious. We also played a game called “Things”, we had a ton of fun! Lucille is wicked nice, we all love having her around!

Team with Lucille

One day the Maple 4 girls got sent to a house about 30 minutes outside of town. Our site supervisor Jeff was leading us out there, the road to the house ended up being closed because the bridge going over the river had to large sink holes in either side. We ended up having to take a 45 minutes detour all the way back out and around on dirt roads in the middle of fields and farm land. The roads were pretty muddy and slippery because it had been drizzling all day. We got the van pretty dirty from all the mud. When we made it to the house we found a few large families of frogs living both inside and outside the house. They were hopping around all over the place. When we went into the basement to find a water source to hook up the power washers too, we found a drainage hole full of water that had about 30-40 more frogs in there swimming around and sitting on the bottom. It was crazy; I have never seen so many frogs in my life!

Frogs in a bucket

~Christina

Fighting Water with Water

Maple 4 arrived in Minot, ND for our last project of the year. We are doing disaster relief for a flood that happened in June 2011. One of the biggest jobs we have had to do is power wash homeowners’ houses to get all of the dirty water and mold off of their walls and ceilings.

Sam power washing one of the first homes Maple 4 worked on

We were trained how to power wash by AmeriCorps NCCC alum Nick. He works for Nechama now, so he was in charge of power washing in Minot. We did a good job power washing all those homes and the homeowners really love what we’ve done.

Nick told us about a four-step process to sanitize these homes:


1. You power wash everything. When you do this step, you go top to bottom and you need to stay 3 to 5 inches away from the wood. If you are too close, you are going to chip wood off, and too far not clean enough. This step is supposed to remove 99% of the mold in the house.
2. You wash the wood with Simple Green. It’s a mild detergent. We use this to get rid of the 1% the first power wash misses.
3. You rinse off the Simple Green.
4. You bleach the wood. The bleach is used just to make sure that the mold doesn’t come back.

Drew power washing a basement ceiling

Power washing is a lot of fun to do. You really get things done with the power washer. When our newest site supervisor came to Minot, he described a new nozzle. It’s stronger than the ones we were using and is helpful to our team. We were doing one house in two days with the old nozzle, but now we can do two houses in one day.

~Drew