Our Workday Report for Wednesday, June 11, 2014

A little different report this time.  As it was a weekday today, not every homeowner was at home when we stopped by to follow up on the Right of Entry ("ROE") authorizations we received from the Mayor's assistant, Toraine Norris, or Bessemer Baptist Association's director, Dr. Barry Cosper, to help clear debris from their properties.  So we don't have pictures to show you in this report of the actual persons we served.  We realize that makes this report a little more distant and impersonal, but even though we may not have had the chance to meet every homeowner face to face today, that didn't dampen our enthusiasm for serving them in the name of Jesus as we've been called to do.

We had an outstanding team of volunteers working with us today.  From left to right they were Bob Suellentrop, Dean Charles, Jason Cannon, Ken Clements, Buddy Williams, Jim Pressler, Eric Bradley, Boyd Martin, Ray Miller, Madison Kimbrough and Bob Thompson.  All in all these volunteers provided 99 hours of service in Bessemer today.

We were aided today by Abel, Asbury UMC's Case skid steer, and The Jolly Green Giant ("TJGG"), Jason Cannon's H260 100 horsepower John Deere tractor.  Both were invaluable assets to have with us.

We almost canceled our workday today because the forecast for rain or thunderstorms throughout the day hovered around 50% at our evaluation time of 6:00 AM, as we were needed we decided to go anyway.  Even though the storms of last night made our work sloshy and soggy we were blessed, nevertheless - the rain held off all day and allowed us to clear 7 different properties today in three separate geographic sections of Bessemer. Even though we may not have pictures of the property owners, we do, of course, have some before and after photos to share with you. We started the day back at Mr. Moore's house on 1st Avenue North.  The assignment here was to take down the remaining limbs and trunk of the pecan tree we began sectioning last Saturday.  Half of our chainsaw cutters and Abel made relatively short work of the job.

While the team worked Mr. Moore's job, another team worked down the street at Mr. Wilson's place.  This was TJGG's first job with a CFC team and having his muscle available helped dislodge the hanging limb that had impaled itself in the ground.  Cutters sliced it up into manageable lengths and TJGG hauled the pieces to the curb.

We then dispatched the "Abel" team to clean up a lot where limbs had fallen in the 700 block of 3rd Avenue North (I only have an "after" picture of this job because the team that went there was so eager to get right to work that they forgot to take a "before" picture).

Our 4th job was on 21st Street South and cutters from our TJGG team dispatched the tree that had been uprooted in this homeowner's backyard.  A grapple was needed to lift the sections out of the homeowner's backyard so when Abel arrived he carried the sections to the curb.

Out 5th job was right around the corner on Clarendon Avenue.  This was really our challenging job of the day.  Two huge trees had blown over and actually extended to the neighbor's property (our 6th job; again only an "after" photo to share with you).  TJGG helped to dislodge the hanging limb and our cutters then went to work sectioning the trees us into pieces.  Abel and TJGG worked in tandem pulling debris from the yards to the alley right of way and then TJGG even pulled one of the tree's root balls out of the ground (usually something that's outside the scope of our work, but with Jason's tractor we said we'd give it a try and TJGG responded!  While working this assignment we were filmed and interviewed by WVTM-TV NBC13.  The reporter's story, a video and several still pictures they shot can be viewed at http://www.alabamas13.com/story/25751305/cutters-for-christ-helping-bessemer-bounce-back-from-tornado.

The owner of the Clarendon Avenue properties recommended that we have lunch at his wife's restaurant, Mary's Kitchen and Catering, so that's where half of us went and enjoyed meatloaf, chicken, spaghetti and meatballs, veggies of many types, iced tea and some even indulged in the cornbread.  The restaurant certainly lived up to its "Classic Southern with a touch of Soul!" reputation. After lunch we joined the "Abel" team on Memorial Drive where we returned to David Rhodes' home which we had assessed almost two weeks ago.  A tree had been loosened by the tornado and it was leaning from his neighbor's vacant lot and looked like it might someday fall on his house; but at the time we didn't have a ROE executed by the vacant lot owner so there was nothing we could do.  Well, between then and now the tree fell down on its own, barely missing his house after all.  The property owner had been found and an ROE had been acquired, so our job today was to cut up the debris and haul the pieces out to the street.

Three tree trunks elsewhere on his property still need to come down but the power company was not scheduled to arrive to disconnect the power lines that meandered through them until tomorrow, so that job will actually will be completed by others.  An interesting side note concerning Mr. Rhodes: his parents were members of Riverchase UMC in the 1980's when the newly planted church was meeting in the BlueCross Blue Shield buildings off Riverchase Parkway.  And he was actually baptized there!  As we left David said he hoped to bring his mother to church at Riverchase UMC some Sunday so she could see how it has grown since the time they lived closer and attended regularly and to thank everyone for their help after the tornado.

Mr. Rhodes' job ended our assignments for the day in Bessemer but several of us headed from there to the House of Restoration Church in Birmingham's West End to see how Rev. Sam Williamson and Canterbury UMC's skid steer, Samson, were coming on finishing up moving the large log sections we had cut up on Monday after Sunday night's wind storm had brought down another large pecan tree.  When we got there Sam was just finishing moving the root ball of the tree, completely clearing the property, and workers were already there reinstalling the sections of the chain link fence that surrounds the basketball court that had been destroyed when the tree fell on it.

I would be remiss if I did not state here that for those of us living near the Riverchase Galleria in Hoover - and any others of our CFC teammates who simply wanted to drive to the Chick-fil-A restaurant at Highway 150 and Galleria Boulevard and wear their yellow CFC t-shirt - we have been treated to complementary breakfasts every day CFC has deployed since April 28.  The franchise owner, Morris Jackson, and his general manager, Lucy Czachowski, have been most gracious to display their support of our volunteers and our work in this way and we have been and are most appreciative of their generosity.  Thank you Morris and Lucy! And thank you to everyone who volunteered to work on our CFC team today.  It was a great day of fellowship; it was great to have Madison work with us once again (we last saw her on a Riverchase UMC Disaster Response Ministry team when we were working the Clay tornado in 2012) and it was great to have three new volunteers - Dean, Eric and Jason, plus Jason's TJGG tractor - join us.  All are invited to deploy with us again any time. Bob Thompson