Mennonite Disaster Service, Birmingham, AL

This past week, I went with some other folks from the Saint Louis Mennonite Fellowship to Birmingham, Alabama, where we participated in the work of Mennonite Disaster Service, cleaning up and repairing damage from tornadoes that ripped through the area in April 2011.  A year later, much new construction and repair is evident, but damaged homes and mangled trees continue to mangle the landscape, with some areas looking much more like wilderness than the suburban developments they once were.
A team of ten volunteers from Virginia joined our team of seven in Birmingham, and together with the permanent staff of six, we worked to put four of the properties back into good repair and order.  We replaced a roof, that a falling tree had destroyed.  We cleaned up mold and mildew in the house from one year of exposure to the elements, replacing contaminated drywall, insulation, and  broken windows. At other sites, teams reframed rooms, built decks, painted walls, and tiled floors.

Only relatively few in our group had significant construction experience, but working together, we were able to achieve dramatic results by week's end.  Many in our group, including me, came home with a new skills.  Most importantly, four families were closer to moving back into their homes.

With the number of people and properties still in need of repair work, there are certainly more projects in Birmingham than the MDS unit can handle, but every contribution helps, and MDS is working in a much larger network of aid agencies, providing manual labor for Habitat for Humanity, United Way, and other such organizations' construction projects.  Wherever disaster strikes, whether it be tornadoes, hurricanes, earthquakes, or wildfires, MDS units are not far behind to work to put lives and hope back in order. 

Just a plug for MDS.  The week brought other experiences that I will discuss also.