Volunteers jump in with both feet to help with storm recovery

Volunteers jump in with both feet to help with storm recovery

BY PRU SOWERS

KONK LIFE STAFF WRITER

Some say the worst times bring out the best in people. Looking at the myriad volunteer efforts that have sprung up post-Hurricane Irma, that certainly seems to be true.

With local, federal and county officials continuing their herculean recovery efforts in Key West and throughout Monroe County, there are still gaps that are springing up. Individuals overwhelmed by the damage to their homes and yards, non-Keys residents with supplies to donate, people just needing transportation to the grocery store.

Once again, social media has jumped to the forefront of volunteer efforts. A new page on Facebook calls itself Evacuees of the Keys. Administrator Carolyn Guarini, a Key West resident who works at the Key West Theater, took to her cell phone to pull together a web page and a group of people looking for places to help.

“I need teams of volunteers for clean-up efforts in the Middle Keys. We have compiled our list of folks needing help with cleaning their properties and homes, with the Marathon and Lower Keys Association of Realtor’s list. We are now at 107 properties asking for help. If you want to help, put a group together and contact us, we can team you up with a house to help,” Guarini wrote on the Evacuees Facebook page on Sept. 27. In just 17 days, she and her team had attracted 20,000 people to the website, evacueesofthekeys.org, raised $10,000 and began flying supplies into the Marathon airport.

One simple, small post on the Evacuees website by Mindy Kaufman on Sept. 26 asked for volunteers to help clean her friends’ yard in Summerland Key. The friends turned out to be Diane and Ron Neault. Their home was pushed over by the storm surge and the roof almost destroyed. The Neaults are living in their trailer while they attempt to rebuilt but the yard debris was too much for the 80-year-old Ron to handle. The day after the Evacuees of the Keys posting, a team of eight people showed up at his house.

“I couldn’t believe what they moved. It would have taken heavy machinery to do it. They put me about a week ahead,” he said. “It was just amazing. I knew a few young ladies were coming. Then a couple of guys showed up. Then a couple more. They were like ants.”

The Key West chapter of Women’s March Florida Keys also jumped in. Natalia Duke, one of the organizers of the local chapter, reached out to her members via email, giving two possible dates for volunteers to carpool up to Big Pine Key and help where they could. She has heard about people who need help either through word of mouth or via the Keys Vineyard Community Church in Big Pine Key, which has been matching volunteers with people who need help. While clean-up and debris removal is on top of the list of priorities, sometimes the help needed is something simpler, she said.

“Some people just want a hug or an ear, someone to listen to them,” Duke said. “I went to see one man in a wheelchair, sitting in a few inches of water still in his house. He just wanted to chat.”

Alyson Crean, Key West Communications Manager, said she’s received numerous calls from people offering to help. She directs them to the Monroe County Emergency Operations Center for coordination “so 12 groups don’t show up at one place and zero at another,” she said. But just walking around town, Crean sees all kinds of people helping in all kinds of ways.

“We don’t even know who they are. Someone is on a corner handing out water. We have so much help, it’s amazing,” she said.

But many volunteers aren’t bothering with the organizational efforts of county officials. Duke said sometimes the Keys Vineyard Community Church hands her boxes of cleaning supplies and asks her to knock on doors to see who could use them. She sees the volunteer efforts as an instinctive outgrowth of the primary mission of Women’s March Florida Keys, which formed to fight for women’s rights after Donald Trump’s was elected president.

“It’s a natural extension to be offering our voice, our hand,” she said. “Everyone is going in with mini-groups of five to 10 people. It’s really beautiful.”

Another unsung volunteer is former Key West resident Surrey Westrupp. Currently splitting her time between West Palm Beach and Nashville, Tenn., Westrupp starting organizing clean-up teams from her Nashville base and sending them to homes in the Lower Keys to cover roofs, repair homes, clean up debris and help stock kitchens with groceries. Working with friend Maggie Whitcomb in Big Torch Key, they put together a volunteer group that has flown supplies into Summerland Key, too.

“My intention was to help family and friends in Key West. When I realized they were not in such bad shape, I then found that the Lower Keys had been hit pretty hard. It was just a matter of how to organize it and put it into play,” Westrupp said about the ad hoc volunteer group. “We all ended up working pretty well together.”

These examples of One Human Family are traveling far past the Florida Keys. Scott Moyer, a Michigan resident who vacations in Key West, called it “awe-inspiring.”

“With all the hate-filled news going on these days and the constant disrespecting of each other’s views, I find coming to this site and reading these posts hopeful and inspiring. Like I said when I first joined a couple of weeks ago, there is a spirit in the Keys like no other. Not to sound too corny, but for me at least, you all are keeping my hope alive for humanity,” Moyer wrote on the Evacuees Facebook page.

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