Earlier this month a group of mostly construction management students and professors from Utica College loaded up their toolboxes and headed to Texas, to help out people whose homes were flooded by Hurricane Harvey. They spent several long days hard at work.
Professor David Dubbelde and his Construction Management students, hard at work in 90-degree heat, ripping out sheetrock and ceiling tiles in a house in Dickinson, Texas, near Houston. The team had to perform what they call a “complete mud-out” removing all wet debris from the flooded home.
Sophomore Mike Delia said he expected houses to be in bad shape, with severe water damage. He said one out of the five houses his team worked on required extra-heavy labor.
“Ceilings had to come out too, because mold was starting to grow in there,” Delia said. “The bathroom we had to completely gut, and a couple of our guys got pretty dirty doing that with all the stuff coming out of the ceiling.”
The homeowners were grateful for the help. Delia said one couple became emotional when they found out the UC group traveled 30 hours on a bus to pitch in.
“We showed up on site and told the woman, the wife who owned the house, we told her we were coming from Upstate New York and she just broke down and started crying,” said Delia.
Dubbelde organized the trip to Texas and was confident it would be a great experience for his students.
“Part of what we do in the curriculum, even though it’s not a course per se, we emphasize to a large degree the need to give back to the community,” Dubbelde said. “So it's a great opportunity to rather than just talk about it, experience it, and see how you can help people.”
The students worked on a total of eight houses. One was owned by a man named Mike Patrick who said he has lived through several hurricanes before, but Harvey produced the most rain of them all.
“I’ve been in Texas through Hurricane Carla in 1961, Alicia in 1983,” Patrick said. “It [Harvey] was definitely the worst as far as rain goes. There was so much rainfall in three days I think something like 65 inches they said.”
Patrick was thankful for how far his property had come already, with the help of volunteers.
“They’ve just been coming right and left,” Patrick said. “People just keep showing up. I mean this yard was a mess two and a half weeks ago.”
The UC trip was arranged through a group called Samaritan’s Purse. Assistant Program Manager Debra Cooper says its goal is to help as many people as possible.
“This is a very low point in many of these people’s lives and being able to go or send someone to help them in the midst of this chaos and to give them just a little bit of hope,” said Cooper.
Cooper said the students made a big impact, especially for one homeowner who didn’t know if he would be able to rebuild.
“One gentlemen we worked with today said ‘It would have taken me months to do what y’all did in four hours’,” said Cooper.
And the impact goes beyond the victims of the storm. Occupational Therapy major Liz Kunkler knows what the homeowners in Houston are going through.
“A flood happened by my house in 2011 and it was devastating so I remember people being so thankful for anything,” Kunkler said. “They are just thankful for the littlest thing and it just feels great.”
For students, the trip was physically and emotionally draining, but it was also, well worth the effort.
Briana Greco is with the New York Reporting Project at Utica College.
