Supervision and Demolition

After a few days of small volunteer numbers, Carmax and Sherwin-Williams bused in over 700 volunteers (props to them for making the effort, it was impressive. Buy your next car from Carmax and paint your house with Sherwin-Williams paint.) When we have 80 or 90 volunteers, we have about 40 people for 10 Habitat staff. With 700, we had 200+ for 5 staff -- quite a difference.

But given my "experience", David (our house supervisor) asked me to drive the effort of a small team. I was able to basically lead a team of 10 Carmax volunteers in siding a house. After a week of construction, I am now a team leader! Perhaps I am overstating -- but it was kind of nice to give instruction and correct mistakes, instead of making them. I only made the "Holiday Inn Express" joke once. (They asked how long I had been doing this -- and I said today's my first day, but I did stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night. Lame, but my jokes usually are.) We did a pretty job good -- but we'll see if David wants me back tomorrow.

The other thing I have noticed is that home demolitions seem to be happening all around. My original thought was this is a good thing -- people are working on getting their land ready to rebuild. But I read some and it appears that some of the demolitions are Government-driven. Homeowners are given about a year to return home. If they do not, the home can be demolished. I understand why -- but it seems that so much of the process is unclear (insurance payments, aid payments, levee decisions, etc are just not decided) that I would expect more leniency. I think there is a huge amount of rebuilding occurring and that is great. I hope that all levels of wealth are being treated well.

(Side Note: We are working on Texas Roadhouse Homes for Habitat. Texas Roadhouse challenged all their restaurants to sponsor a complete home for Katrina reconstruction -- and it appears they came through. So, show some love to Texas Roadhouse as well!)