Sunday, March 29, 2009

Volunteering at TrashBash 2009

Map picture
It was a chilly start to the morning. It was in the low 40’s with winds around 15 knots with gust to 20. I met Mark Zimmerman at Skipper’s (a local family-owned restaurant in Clear Lake Shores) for breakfast. This was my first time to visit Skipper’s since Ike came through. Glad to see that they reopened. After their normal excellent service, we went over to the Seabrook boat ramp and signed up for the event.

More people showed up than what I was expecting. Several school and scout groups volunteered to help. All in all I think that a couple hundred people showed up. Our group had about 20 people in it. We started work on 2nd Street from Todville Rd. to the pavilion (about 1/3 of a mile). We ended up with several trash bags full of trash and debris along with several piles of larger items. Some of the more notable items included stuffed animals, several tires, sailboat mast, trash cans, and paint cans. The largest item that we were able to get out was a dishwasher and kitchen sink with the dishes still in the dishwasher.

It was amazing the amount of large items still needing to be moved. There were several cars still in the water and chain link fences. We even found an HVAC unit next to the waters edge. Unfortunately it was too heavy for us to remove. It has been 6 months since Ike hit and Seabrook is still recovering. One of the organizers said that there has already been 146 tons of debris removed from Seabrook. That is just one small community that was affected by Ike. Places like Bolivar will take a couple of years to completely recover.

No comments:

Post a Comment