Tuscaloosa Monday, April 23

Mission: Tuscaloosa 2012

After eating breakfast and packing lunches, we piled into the church van and drove to the Habitat site. Our drive took us through part of the 2011 tornado's path, and the devastation was obvious in destroyed trees and flattened (now missing) houses. The cleanup, meaning removal of debris, has been all but completed, with a few damaged buildings still to be seen.  Most destroyed buildings have been removed, leaving just concrete slabs to show where people once lived.  On Thursday we'll have a closer look at the damage area during a tour hosted by First Presbyterian Church of Tuscaloosa.

The habitat site has several houses in various stages of construction, some almost completed and others about to have foundations poured.  We were welcomed by the Habitat for Humanity supervisor for Tuscaloosa.

Habitat's supervisor giving us our initial pep-talk.

There were a number of mission groups from all over the US, including New Jersey and the Midwest.  Each team was assigned to a different house.  The group from Wake Forest Presbyterian was assigned to one of the houses in the immediate area that was almost complete; their goal is to actually complete it by the end of the week.

Our group was assigned to a house out in the countryside, near where the tornado's destructive path ended.  The house is down in a valley, and is surrounded by a mix of homes that were also destroyed and others that had minor or no damage.  Our house collapsed on its owner, severely injuring him.  The new house is the same size as the earlier one (same slab, after all), but has been redesigned inside to address the owner's mobility issues and to include a "safe room", which is an interior room that is very heavily built in order to act as a tornado shelter.

We arrive at our Habitat house, along with lots of scaffolding.

When we arrived, the house had been sheathed
but the window and door openings had not yet been cut out.

One of the first things we did was to use a reciprocating saw
to cut the openings.  Now it looks like a house rather than a shed.

Adding sheathing to the rear gable end.

Some of our team members tried unfamiliar tools, while others settled in to familiar jobs.

Still others approached the work like it was their day job, which in fact it is.

Using a reciprocating saw to cut the sill plate away where the doors will go.

Pete, our site supervisor, gives instruction on using a hand-held metal-cutting band saw. The saw was used to cut lengths of threaded rod that will be used to bolt the framing to the slab.  The new house is being constructed to withstand 130 mph winds, such as a major hurricane might have.

We broke for lunch, which was the sandwiches that we had packed at the church.

Drilling the holes for the threaded rods.  Drilling took considerable effort, but the worst part was cleaning out the concrete dust so that the epoxy that holds the rods to the slab would adhere properly.

 

Using a hammer drill to install high-tech screws in the walls of the safe room.  The walls are double-studded on the inside, and then covered with a sheet of steel and two 3/4-inch layers of plywood.  Hundreds of these screws fasten everything together.

After we cleaned up at the end of the day, the house shows considerable progress.

Our to-do list for the week shows good progress.

Back at the church, dinner was lasagne and salad.  We cooked tonight (easy to do -- just take pre-made lasagne out of the freezer in the morning and bake it in the evening) and the Wake Forest group cleaned up.  Tomorrow we will exchange duties.

A very successful first day, and everyone is tired.  We will do this each day, but the jobs we do will change as portions of the house are completed.