Nearly three years ago Hurricane Irene, a big, low-intensity storm that swirled off the Atlantic coast, didn’t seem like much of a threat to many people living on the North Carolina shore.
But when Melvin Clark, who was going through a round of cancer treatments at the time, looked out the kitchen window of his coastal home on the morning of August 27, he saw a three-foot-high surge of ocean water churning towards his door.
“Thankfully, as the hurricane went north, an off-shore wind picked up that blew most of the flood water back out to sea,” Clark recalled. “But the lower half of my house was soaked and damaged by the flood.”
The huge storm not only hit North Carolina, it lumbered on up the Eastern Seaboard causing damage in Virginia, New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Vermont, and Nova Scotia. It was the eleventh billion-dollar disaster to occur in 2011. Irene caused more than 40 deaths, dropped more than a foot of rain, caused $6.5 billion in damage, forced evacuations in six states, and knocked-out power to some 8-million residents along the Atlantic coastline.
Clark was one of the last homeowners in Hyde County, North Carolina, that World Renew DRS assisted before volunteers begin to close the reconstruction site at the end of this month. World Renew has been hosted by the United Methodist Church in Scranton since February 2012, with volunteers and work teams rotating into the area to assist home owners like Clark through the disaster recovery process for more than two years.
World Renew DRS volunteer Gordon Nyhof met Melvin Clark in February 2014 as a work team arrived to complete the repairs on Clark’s house. Since the hurricane, Clark’s relatives and friends had been helping him with yard work and getting him to chemotherapy appointments, but his home still needed substantial repairs.
“We took the kitchen and bathroom down to the studs and rebuilt them,” Nyhof says. “We also raised the bedroom floor so that it’s level with the rest of the first-floor rooms and replaced the leaking metal roof.” The work included new sinks, bathtub, faucets, and fixtures.
“We prayed with Melvin nearly every morning that we worked on his house,” Nyhof said. “And while we were there, he found out that he is cancer free.”
In the last three years, more than 620 World Renew DRS volunteers like Gordon Nyhof helped Clark and other Hurricane Irene survivors in Hyde County complete repairs to their homes. These volunteers donated more than 73,000 work hours to DRS projects—nearly the equivalent of 35 full-time employees in the same time period.
World Renew worked previously in Hyde and Beaufort counties after Hurricane Isabel in 2003.