Photo By Kerry Solan | POLK COUNTY, Fla. -- Jessica Kettelcamp at a stop between visiting houses at which she...... read more read more
Something about it was off to her.
Kettelcamp, a U.S. Army Corps of Engineers civil engineer, was there to assess damage to the roof of the home.
Or, at least, she thought she was – she was near Polk County lines and there were no markings on the roads. She had just kept driving toward a dot on the map.
A woman emerged from the home, put herself between Kettelcamp and the man, and began yelling.
“She said, ‘Girl, you better get off our property right now,’” Kettelcamp said. “Except there was cussing.”
She paused. “A lot of cussing.”
And that’s when she noticed the man in the doorway had a loaded crossbow pointed at her.
***
Hurricane Irma howled with 130 mile-per-hour winds when she began to claw her way from warm Atlantic waters onto Florida’s shores.
She was the most powerful storm Florida had experienced since Hurricane Andrew in 1992.
After scrabbling onto land, Irma spun north and -- along with other destructive deeds -- dug her fingernails under shingles, pulling them away and flicking them into 80-plus mile-per-hour gusts.
She inflicted the same kind of damage seen after hurricanes Gustav, Charlie, Ivan and Jeanne.
Each time, the temper of those storms, and the resulting damage to roofs, summoned a specific response from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers: Operation Blue Roof.
****
After Hurricane Irma, 70,000 rolls of blue plastic sheeting, emblazoned with “FEMA” in bold white letters, was divided and delivered to warehouses throughout Florida.
In disaster areas, the Corps, under the direction of FEMA, launches Operation Blue Roof. The program uses licensed contractors to install the blue sheeting on damage roofs until residents can arrange permanent repairs.
The mission is done in the name of restoring normalcy.
Covering damaged roofs allows residents to stay in their homes, protect their private property, and avoid costly hotel stays or the displacement challenges of living in shelters.
To initiate Operation Blue Roof, Corps employees were trained as quality assessors to look at roof damage and determine whether a roof was eligible for the program.
Kettelcamp was one of the more than 280 employees who saw the call for QAs and volunteered to support temporary roofing mission in Florida.
A training room near downtown Tampa became the clearinghouse for all of the Corps’ QAs, and in 8-hour blocks, the Corps trained employees how to assess a roof for damage.
Ben Bremer, who ran the training, said he felt personally responsible for churning out assessors who understood the job.
“Our mission is really made or broken by how well these people leave my class understanding what to do,” he said.
Bremer ran the assessors through practical exercises that mimicked what assessors would do in the field: measuring real homes, drawing homes and their roofs, and teaching a trigonometry shortcut to approximate the slope of a roof.
By the end of the training, Bremer gave the assessors phones, taught them how to enter roofing information into a specially built program, how to get their assignments each day, and then he launched the QAs into 30 counties in Florida.
***
In the early days of Operation Blue Roof, which go back as early as Hurricane Andrew, the Corps realized they needed a dedicated team of QAs at the “Right of Entry” centers, where people could go and sign up for the program.
Leonard Waker was one of the first responders whom the Corps sent to a Right of Entry center.
There, residents, or representatives acting on their behalf, could sign a right of entry form, giving assessors and contractors permission to come on to their property and work.
That’s the technical side of things.
The other side, which dozens of QAs repeated in interviews, was just as important – it was the human side.
Waker’s ROE center was a table and chairs near the cash registers in a Fort Meyer Lowes Home Improvement store.
Those first days, Waker said, the lines of people needing help was long, and the people in it short on resources in towns where shelves had been stripped of generators and tarps.
One the first people in line was a woman, she tucked herself into the seat across from the QA.
Waker, a robust Alabama native who dwarfs a folding chair, noticed the woman seemed to be dazed.
He leaned in, folded his hands on the table.
“How can I help you?” he asked.
The woman with the silver hair began to cry.
Waker admits to being the kind of guy who will make you talk your way through your worst day so that he can help. And this day was no exception.
He pulled his chair around to the woman and hugged her.
“It hurt my heart to talk to her – her husband had passed away shortly before the hurricane,” he said.
At the Ft. Meyer ROE, Waker and the other QAs signed up more than 3,000 people for the program – he said he was hoarse after the first week.
The pace was non-stop, Waker said, but he still said he carries so many stories, including the new widow, with him.
He said he’ll remember a single mother who signed up for the program, and then returned to the ROE with her children after her blue roof was installed.
The family had made Waker cookies – chocolate chip with raisins -- to thank him.
“These people are forever going to be in my heart,” he said.
***
Bri McGuffie and Erin Larivee stepped over debris to reach the home of a fishing captain in the Florida Keys.
Both were assigned as QAs to Monroe County in southern Florida.
Despite knowing what to expect, McGuffie said she was still stunned to see how Hurricane Irma had so easily upended the homes and lives of so many people.
“Over and over, I saw the total contents of homes sitting out on the curb like they were nothing,” she said.
As McGuffie and Larivee talked to the fishing captain while assessing his roof, one thing was apparent to both of them.
“He was shellshocked,” said McGuffie.
The resident had just had surgery for a hernia, and his limited range of motion prevented him from beginning clean up.
As they assessed the roof, they realized it wouldn’t qualify for the program.
Larivee said she couldn’t remember why his particular roof was disqualified, but specific reasons exist: The roof may be flat, metal or made of ceramic tile. Flat roofs won’t support the sheeting, damaged metal will have sharp edges that will cut the plastic, and ceramic tile would shatter under the nails used to secure the temporary roofing. Homes with more than 50 percent structural damage are also disqualified. Once the blue roof is installed, the “structure must be habitable.”
Both McGuffie and Larivee still felt compelled to do something.
While talking to the homeowner, he’d pointed out a large freezer that was floating at the end of the pier. He suspected it couldn’t be salvaged, but said he would like to get it back on land.
McGuffie and Larivee hauled the freezer from the water for the fishing captain.
“It stinks that we couldn’t help him with his roof,” said McGuffie. “But we were able to help him with something.”
Larivee said that nearly every resident they encountered, despite having lost everything, were some of the friendliest people she’d ever met.
“They told me their stories, and I loved talking to them,” she said. “They were all so positive, and so kind.”
****
The Corps’ temporary roofing mission is so specialized, it belongs to just a few groups. Four temporary roofing and planning and response teams are located in district offices in Nashville, St. Louis, Omaha and Little Rock.
Employees from those districts served as experts as QAs were out in the field.
Kevin Salvilla from Nashville District became a supervisor for QAs in Florida, and pointed to the relationships that the QAs build that helps them grind through their days.
“It’s inspiring – what drives us collectively,” he said.
“Our mission, what we do here during these long days – it feeds us.”
In order to visit as many homes as possible, QAs begin visiting homes at 7 a.m., take 30 minutes for lunch, and work until 7 p.m.
Marvin Boyer, a QA, said it seemed like limitless days, especially when interacting with people who had lost so much.
Boyer recalled standing beside a homeowner as they gazed at his home. Irma had dug her windy, wet claws into his life when she raked across the Florida Keys and damaged most everything he owned.
The owner had prepared for this: he had flood and hurricane insurance.
But his claim was denied by his insurance carrier – the homeowner told Boyer it had to do with his concrete pilings.
“I saw so much heartbreak out there,” Boyer said. “It makes you appreciate all that you have.”
In the front yard, Boyer finished processing the homeowner’s request for a blue roof.
Then, Boyer stood beside the homeowner as he cried.
****
When Operation Blue Roof sign-ups closed on Oct. 13, approximately 17,500 people signed a right of entry forms – and the mission wasn’t over until each home was visited.
The most recent census data shows that in homes across Florida, one in five people speak Spanish.
Most of the Corps employees who volunteered to come to Florida didn’t.
But QA Mason Carter was determined to make sure that didn’t prevent him from helping someone get a blue roof.
Carter remembers a home where the language barrier didn’t matter: the homeowner threw her arms around him and hugged him hard when he arrived to assess her roof.
“She was waving and smiling at me the entire time I was there,” he said.
Carter, who worked both at an ROE collection center and as a QA, said he looked forward to interacting with the public every day.
“This is one of the only face-to-face interactions they’ll have with the Corps of Engineers,” he said. “It’s a chance to provide a positive image of the Corps.”
Carter remembers the Spanish-speaking homeowner well, because of how grateful and welcoming she was. When it began to rain outside, she invited him inside.
“It choked me up as I left, because she was so kind,” he said. “I’m not superman – I’m just doing this little thing.”
***
Back in Polk County, Jessica Kettelcamp tried to defuse the situation while the man continued to level the crossbow at her.
“Usually, when I explain that I’m with the Corps of Engineers or mention FEMA, they usually recognize why I’m there,” she said.
Because QAs must visit every home that submitted an ROE, she wanted to be sure the couple didn’t need help – but she received one last warning from the woman who stood between her and the crossbow:
“You’d better get off our property or you’re gonna get shot.”
Kettelcamp said, threats of bodily harm aside, she’s going to remember those who greeted her like a friend, despite their own daily anxiety about the storm damage – for her, it will be a woman who offered her a papaya smoothie and papaya plant.
“At the end of the day, we’re giving people the help they need,” she said. “I can hold onto that.”
| Date Taken: | 11.09.2017 |
| Date Posted: | 02.14.2019 10:21 |
| Story ID: | 254846 |
| Location: | TAMPA, FLORIDA, US |
| Web Views: | 66 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
This work, After hurricanes, assessors serve as the face, heart of recovery mission, by Kerry Solan, identified by DVIDS, must comply with the restrictions shown on https://www.dvidshub.net/about/copyright.
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