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LDS Disaster Relief The first place we went to was a member that had a lot a trees down in the side and rear yard. In the third picture you can see one of the trees we had to move, as well as one of the burn piles we made. I think we ended up with about 10 burn piles. The John Deere Skid Steer 240 made it a lot easier to carry off the larger trunks. A lot of manpower was still needed to cut the trees into pieces and to pile and move the branches. Second house was a very nice looking older home that had a double curved stair case leading up to the front porch. I can't believe I didn't take a picture of the house itself. There were only 3 trees to work on here. One was just plain large and took a lot of time, the second was a group of smaller trees, but they had to be hauled all the way down a fairly good sized hill to the piles across the road that FEMA will be picking up. This was done without the John Deere, it was called on to temporarily help elsewhere. The last tree had a very large limb hanging down form near the top, what many call a "widow maker". Since it was not possible to remove the limb, the owner asked to have the entire tree taken out. This tree was the side of a hill, between two houses. The only place to drop it was toward the road where there were two other trees. As we expected, when it came down, it caught in one of the other trees, but was now at a level we could work with. I climbed the tree and removed the upper branches. When the John Deere arrived, we used it to push the trunk out of the other tree. While we were working on this home, their neighbor asked if we could help them out. She has a daughter who is on a respirator, and the power company has threatened to shut off her power if she does not remove the tree that is leaning toward the power line. She also had a lot of other trees that needed to be cleared. We were not able to completely remove the tree, but we did remove the dangerous parts that were threatening the lines. We also cleared up the property. There was one large stump near the house that when we tried to remove it, we broke the water line. A miracle the line had not been broke when the tree fell. After repairing the line, we decided to leave the trunk do to it's proximity to the line. The last place we worked Saturday was a group effort. Our team, along with another Tennessee team with a John Deere 270, went to help out a third crew. I do not know where this other crew was from. There were several houses at the end of a dead end road, it looked like every tree along that road and come down right across the road. The road crew had cleared the road, but clearing the trees from the side was left to us. A large job that made full use of both Skid Steers as well as two trailers to haul limbs out to the main road for pickup. Sunday morning we got our assignments and then had Sacrament with Searcy and Conway 2nd ward before heading out. Just us and Searcy teamed up this day. The first place no one was home, but we were able to see in the back yard the tree that needed to be cleared, and where they were piling the firewood. This was a short and easy job, lasting only about an hour. Last job on Sunday was an elderly "old southern Lady". A very nice person who needed her back yard cleared, a tarp to cover her roof, and a quick patch on the shed in the back that a tree had fallen on. Jeremy got to do the tree climbing this time to help get rid of the loose branches. While here, a neighbor asked how she could get on the list to have some help. She will be 83 this Tuesday and has been clearing the trees herself by loading them a piece at a time onto a pickup truck to haul out to the road. We are given assignments each morning, and told to watch for other opportunities to serve. I made out a work order for her and called it in to the local coordinator. Someone will be back soon. There were requested to be 300 volunteers with weekend in Hattiesburg, they had 305. We all stayed in a camp city on a field at the Oak Grove Middle School. The showers were almost as warm as the no hot water showers in Slidell.
David Angell |
