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We asked if we were still needed in
Fairfield and told "yes." So on Wednesday morning, July
12, at 8:15 am, an 11-man Cutters for Christ team (Alan Weeks, Bob
Nabors, Bob Thompson, Boyd Martin, David Moser, Henry Averyt, John
Calhoun, John Fillebaum, Pink Folmar, Tim Smith and Wes Savage) and
Asbury UMC's skid steer "Abel" convened at our Fairfield
staging site (the Flintridge Shopping Center parking lot) ready to deploy
to the addresses that the city had pre-qualified and for which they had
received signed Right of Entry authorization forms from the property
owners occupying the properties still in need. Perhaps we should
have known this deployment would be a bit different when there was no one
at the Wright Center (where the job assignments are distributed) when
this writer arrived just before 8 am to pick up our assignments, nor did
the person who was going to give us our assignments arrive until 8:45
am. (Admittedly and respectfully, she had had her own set of
problems this morning that kept her from arriving until that time.)
I was given a list of 55 jobs and was told all had ROEs on file, but no
one was able to tell me which of the jobs might be clustered together so
we could break up and work two teams closely enough together so Abel
could run between the two teams moving cut-up debris. John Calhoun
and I took the list and began locating addresses that were at least
listed as being on the same streets while the rest of the team moved on
to the corner of Court G and 56th Street - where we had worked last week
just east of Miles College - and prepared to deploy to the addresses
which John and I would identify as needing our help.
An hour later we returned to the team - which now had been waiting around
for assignments for almost 2 hours! - and told them that we had scoped
out 16 addresses and determined that 15 of them had already been
completed! The one that remained was a small job on a corner that
maybe would take two cutters less than 30 minutes to complete.
David, Henry and Tim volunteered to head to that address and complete the
work. With no other work that we could find for ourselves, the rest
of the team headed home while Boyd, John and I went to the Wright Center
to report our findings to the administrative folks there and to state
that based upon all the addresses we scoped out having already been completed,
we did not foresee our teams returning to Fairfield after completing the
one job our team was undertaking at the corner of 66th Street and Myron
Massey Boulevard.
Before departing ourselves we were told in a telephone conversation at
the Wright Center by a city public works official that there was still a
desperate need for tree cutting debris removal in the alleys behind Court
F, so the three of us went back to Court F only to find that both of the
alleys - the one to the east and the one to the west behind Court F -
were clear and passable throughout their entire lengths!
We reported that to the staff at the Wright Center and with that Boyd
headed home. John and I thought we'd drive past the Myron Massey
assignment just to see how the team had fared there and we were quite
surprised to find them still working there one hour after they
started! As it turned out this property was actually 3 lots
side-by-side, owned by the same property owner, and trees were down on
all three of her lots, not just the one that could be seen from the
street when we made our drive-by assessment!
So John and I stopped to help pull the debris that resulted from the
trees they had cut and stayed with them until the job was finished.
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