POQUOSON, Va. (AP) – Plywood planks across a muddy yard lead to a vinyl-sided beige rancher that looks like typical new construction, but the cheerful gray-haired men and women rolling and brushing primer on the walls inside are not your average construction crew.
Such crews have become almost business as usual, though, as coastal Poquoson labors to recover from its $100 million devastation by Hurricane Isabel with lots – and lots – of volunteer help.
“I never knew people went around working disasters,” said Jeff Mungo, a member of the all-volunteer Poquoson Recovery Team that still works full time coordinating assistance to residents without enough insurance to repair their homes.
Soon after the hurricane hit on Sept. 18, 2003, church volunteers from around the country – first from the Mennonite Church and later the Church of the Brethren – began rotating into the southeastern Virginia city of 11,500 to work on reconstruction for a week at a time.
Eighteen months later, recovery is still under way in parts of Virginia. March 18 was the deadline for residents to be out of federally supplied trailers, but 85 families remain in temporary housing.
The state applied for an extension of the deadline, and a spokesman for the Federal Emergency Management Agency said no one would be out on the street.
Forty Poquoson families are still in the trailers, most of which are travel trailers. That’s down from 256 right after the storm. Another 19 are in Gloucester, a spokesman for the state Department of Emergency Management said, and the rest are scattered in eastern Virginia localities except for one in Buena Vista.
Of some 400 households in Poquoson that filed with FEMA for assistance, church teams have made repairs on about 100. In about two-thirds of the homes, “we’re talking about almost a rebuilding,” said Fae Mungo, Jeff Mungo’s wife and a member of the recovery team.
The Mennonite volunteers who stayed until June and the Church of the Brethren teams at work for more than a year are not the only denominations that pitched in. Members of the Christian Reformed Church spent six weeks doing damage assessments, a United Methodist agency helped take relief requests, a Hampton church provides lodging for the out-of-town volunteers and area churches continue to sponsor weekend projects. The Salvation Army was a big help to the recovery team, the Mungos said.
“There’s such an abundance of goodwill,” said Poquoson Community Relations Manager Dave Callis.
Many volunteers have been retirees, but some have taken time off from work and some belong to youth groups. Recovery team member Alice Barton left an interview last week to meet with a Girl Scout who wanted to build a set of steps for a family.
Help from outside the area has been necessary to recover, Fae Mungo said.
“Our people couldn’t help because we were all in the same boat,” she said.
The modular home that Brethren members from Ohio were finishing up last week was built in Lebanon, Pa., by 60 church members and trucked to Virginia, Barton said.
“Angels have descended on my property,” said Ann Lang, who had just lost her mother and found out she would lose her job right before Isabel damaged her 200-year-old house was so badly that it had to be demolished.
Lang didn’t even have enough money for the demolition, but “on a whim” stopped by the recovery team office. She turned up an hour before a deadline for team members to find a family for the 1,300-square-foot home that had been rejected by a larger family.
“This is the house that love built,” said Lang, 42, adding that the size is perfect for her and her 11-year-old daughter.
As the team from southern Ohio painted, built a deck and laid hardwood floors in Lang’s house, three church members from northern Ohio installed trim on doors, windows and baseboards in another.
“People say ‘Why don’t they leave?'” said Maurice Curie of Orrville, Ohio, who like many volunteers was making a repeat visit to Virginia. “For a lot of people, it’s all they have.”
Lang was impressed with the volunteers’ workmanship.
“In many cases what we’ve been able to do has been better than they had to start with,” Fae Mungo said.
Rose Topping, who moved back to her home a month ago, eagerly showed off a new wall cabinet that volunteers built in her kitchen.
“We lost everything” when floodwater came up to the doorknobs, said Topping, 75. “Oh, it was a sight.”
A key to residents’ emotional recovery has been a four-member city team that has kept working even after government funding ran out.
“Right now I think we have more people in distress than we had early on,” said Carol Mann, a team member. “The money’s not everything.”
Mann had her own troubles after her house got so much water in it that a school of fish swam through, but she said she “would’ve went nuts” had she not been able to get out and help others.
Many families still in travel trailers are waiting for their houses to be elevated on cinderblock foundations, an insurance and city requirement for 200 homes that received flood damage of more than 50 percent.
Some houses have to be raised as much as 10 feet, giving the impression giants designed them. They often require even more work afterward. Mann’s spacious home has cracks where some walls meet, the new wood floors bow and a brick hearth had to be removed when it collapsed.
But Mann believes Poquoson will make a full recovery.
“We’ll get it,” she said. “We’ll get back to where we need to be.”