I spoke with a woman today who was left by her husband, with two handicapped children and a teenager to take care of. She told me she just begun to feel stronger and more resilient. And then her basement and first floor flooded. She works night shifts as a nurse and now she is trying to figure out where to begin with fema and clean up.
Another woman broke down crying when she tried to thank us for the food our trucks are providing each day. Its the first day in 2 weeks where she and her husband dont have something with the house they have to be doing. We found her sitting eating yogurt in what she called "my new kitchen" on the front lawn.
Then a man invited us into his home- he and his family moved back in about a week ago. They had a fishtank for a basement and six inches of water into their first floor. Their basement walls and ceiling are now covered with black mold. Meanwhile his wife has terminal lung cancer which has just spread to the bone marrow. She shouldnt be in this house.
The mood definitely feels different today. People are in the waiting stages. And the extent of their losses sets in. They wait for their answers from insurance, from FEMA. They wait for new water heaters and new contractors. They wait for the city dump trucks amd tractors to take their piles of belongings from the curb. They wait for the weather report to tell them its the end of hurricane season.
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