Alternative Spring Break: Day 2 – Tania

Hey guys, it’s Tania here. I bet most of you on Spring Break didn’t wake up at 7am. And if you did, it definitely wasn’t to Brando’s knock on the door.

On our second day here, we were put to work. As mentioned in the previous blog entries, we watched a documentary on the impact that Superstorm Sandy had on Staten Island, except it is more than what you would see on a tv screen. The drive to All Hands was scenic yet devastating. Buildings were torn apart, there were floods in the streets, and anything left behind was slowly decaying (especially with the recent bi-polar weather. we’ve been having). Arriving on site, we were next to abandoned lots filled with pieces of houses that Sandy tore off.

So how to explain mold removal? Well strangely, it’s a lot like things you would do even in terms of no disaster. Foaming the walls was like painting, agitating the floor boards is a fancy word for scrubbing, rinsing off the foam is practically like watering a garden.

After a long day of hard work and being called the best group ever seen by the site manager Skippy (who I could probably talk about for days) we went back for a quick shower to get ready for a talk from Bill Johnson. He takes yearly walks around Staten Island even though he is an elderly man – Vietnam veteran, average health and only one lung. As the town’s “griot”, he goes out of his way to make sure that you know what’s going on in the neighborhood and one story, many have heard is the one of Donna Moore, who lost her two sons because they were pulled away during a huge wave crashing ONTO HER STREET. The main point Bill tried to make is that the government should own up to their actions. Instead of building the biggest Ferris wheel and a new shopping mall, how about spending that money towards the relief effort?

Furious?  Come out and join Bill Johnson on his yearly walks and have a voice.