Our Workday Report for Tuesday, July 1, 2014

Well, I should never have said our work had concluded for the time being!  Less than one week after I made that declaration we were back in Bessemer to tackle the job that the City of Bessemer had asked us to consider on Cumberland Road. As my distribution list is the same for both our Cutters for Christ ("CFC") Disaster Response Ministry ("DRM") and our Riverchase UMC ("RUMC") DRM, this report will incorporate information about our morning CFC DRM job and our afternoon RUMC DRM work.

Our CFC team today consisted of 7 members, plus the Asbury UMC skid steer "Abel" - (standing from left to right) Bob Thompson, Henry Averyt, Ray Miller, homeowner Sandra Camp, Eric Bradley, Boyd Martin, Jason Cannon, (squatting down in front) Buddy Williams and (in the background) "Abel."  You'll notice in our team picture that today we wore the t-shirts of our respective church disaster response ministry teams, emphasizing the faith-based coalition ministry that we are.  Our CFC DRM is comprised of Methodist, Baptist, Lutheran and Catholic church volunteers at the present time.

Mrs. Camp had previously had her downed trees limbed and the limb debris removed to her curb, but the trees themselves - one of them, the pine, was massive at approximately 50 feet long, 9.5 feet in circumference and 40 inches in diameter(!!) and had fallen on the smaller tree when it was uprooted - remained in her yard.  Our job was to remove them (which, of course, we did), leaving her only stubby tree stumps and their root balls as souvenirs of the tornado that toppled them over.  Mrs. Camp watched the entire operation from her observation seat located under her carport and she very generously offered us fresh strawberries and cookies which we certainly appreciated during our half-time hydration break.

We were also blessed by team member Jason Cannon bringing his drone, equipped with a GoPro camera, with him today (he uses the aerial tool to fly over and monitor his crops and farm property; it's the modern alternative to hiring a helicopter or airplane service to do that for him or fly him up personally for a bird's eye view).  He sent it up to take several images of our work in process during the morning.  Here's one that will give you a perspective of how small we are compared to how big the tree was on which we were working.

After saying our good-byes to Mrs. Camp and sharing a circle of prayer with her before our departure, the team dispersed to go their separate ways to pursue different afternoon obligations. On behalf of our RUMC DRM Ray Miller and I went on to the House of Restoration Church, a United Methodist mission located in Birmingham's West End, where we had been asked to follow-up on a job we undertook several weeks back.  The debris we had cut and Canterbury UMC's skid steer "Samson" had moved to the curb had been picked up by the City of Birmingham - that is, all but one piece.  Apparently the root ball was just too large and heavy for the City's grapple trucks to pick up!  So we were asked to return and cut the trunk into smaller, more manageable and lighter pieces so the City could return and remove them. Ray and I were back to the old days, without a skid steer to support our efforts, cutting the root ball into smaller pieces that we could move ultimately move ourselves with the help of cant hooks, iron bars and strong backs.  The temperature was high - in the middle 90's - so we took several rest breaks and drank plenty of water and Gatorade.  This was another big circumference, big diameter piece of lumber, but after 2.5 hours we felt we had completed the job sufficiently for the City to return and complete theirs.

So maybe this really was our final deployment in connection with the April 28 tornado, but who really knows?! In conclusion today our CFC DRM would like to especially acknowledge and thank Asbury and Riverchase UMCs which have committed ongoing support to our coalition ministry through their  contributions of equipment and money: for "Abel" and the diesel fuel and maintenance to keep him operating; for the purchase of both short- and long-bar chainsaws and a pole saw plus the pre-mixed 50:1 fuel and bar oil for them; and for many arbor hand tools, as well.  And we'd also like to thank the United Methodist Church North Alabama Conference which generously offered us reimbursement for several expenses that were incurred by both individual volunteers and our church DRMs during the course of our work following this most recent severe storm.  And finally, we thank you, once again - for your prayers and continued interest in our services provided in Jesus' name and for the Glory of God.

In His Service, Bob