Staten Island Cleanup

This is old news by now, but over a month ago I went with a Team Pegasus teammate to volunteer for the Staten Island cleanup. Staten Island was hit pretty hard by Hurricane Sandy, and there were lots of homes that were still cleaning out their flooded basements and first floors.

There was a motorcycle club (gang? haha) volunteering at the supply station.





This was my gang for the day.



Hey look there's me! We cruised around in a big 15 passenger van for the day. The first hour or so was more like a tour than volunteering, as we cruised around trying to find somewhere to get to work. There were so many volunteers and, understandably, it was hard to organize everyone.



There were lots of pop-up stations with supplies in people's backyards, etc. Here we grabbed some supplies to hand out on the streets.








Some families threw everything out, including all of their children's toys, while others spent their day cleaning off every pair of shoes, string of plastic beads and bottle of nail polish. Here we've got a nicely organized trash pile (some stuff just got dumped out on the curb, no bags or anything) with a trashed car.




Many junked cars still lining the streets with water still in the headlights.





High water marks were apparent all over the place.



The woman who lived here said that her second floor wooden floors and walls were just starting to warp from the moisture wicking up the walls from the saturated first floor.



The streets looked post-apocalyptic.







There was some heavy machinery roaming the streets, too. This machine clamped piles of trash and dumped them into a waiting dumpster.





Here's the group just before wrapping up for the day.



It's interesting to see the difference between Hurricane Sandy and the Sandy Hook shooting. With Hurricane Sandy there were plenty of things people could do to help. All you had to do was carve out some time and get dirty. With Sandy Hook, it's much more confusing and frustrating.