Flood Reflections After Two Weeks: Losing, Building, People and Ending …

1) Oh my goodness how much can be wiped away, in one night …

Whether we saw the pictures, or saw the cars in the creek, or saw the roads, or the fences, or the houses and basements — we all saw in our own way how much can be lost, in a “flash.”

I won’t recap it, because I can’t. It’s appropriate for that to make us stop in our tracks, to need to sit down, to need a minute to process, to ask each other “how did it? …” To ask ourselves “what if? …”.

It’s appropriate to cry.

2) Oh my goodness how much can be channeled, and started, and built in such a short time. From feeling that pit of loss; to saying to ourselves “no, I won’t just sit by …”; to showing up still a little hazy at a volunteer center and mustering out the words “what can I do to help?”

Look at where we’ve come!

First responders pulled out wetsuits, emergency protocol, equipment, and courage most of us didn’t know existed. Local tow trucks pulled cars out of the creek instead of the sides of roads. Riesbecks, Armory Drive, Wheeling University, Guntry, the Kruger Street Toy & Train Museum, Triadelphia United Methodist became command posts, warehouses, operational headquarters, and forward response centers overnight. Neighbors became life lines. Elected officials became another muddy pair of hands in the effort. Teachers and restaurant workers became community coordinators. Home-makers became team leads. Nerds became critical social media teams. Listeners became social workers. Retirees became their peak earners for just one more critical shift — or three. Former flood victims became sages.

Everyone became part of the same team and part of the same solution.

3) It’s about people. “20 cars swept down the creek.” “Three tractor-trailer loads of supplies.” “Fifty, One, Million, Thousand, Half-a, Hundred Dollars …”

You can count a disaster in a lot of ways. They all seem to miss the point however unless you’re counting one thing — people. Our community lost nine people on June 14. And in some weird, 180-degree-different but also exactly-the-same way our WHOLE community — every single person — gained something: a bond, a resolve, a shared purpose that same night, that we will not lose those nine souls in vain, but instead gain that shared something between all of us.

It. Has. Been. Astounding.

Seeing. People.

Being. People.

In. This. Moment.

Doing what each one of us — simply, uniquely, individually and collectively, insignificantly and profoundly — can do.

“I can wash clothes.” “I can muck out a basement.” “I can staff this table.” “I can drive a truck.” “I can make food.” “I can donate this.” “I can deliver anything.” “I can do that computer thing.” “We can!”

Mutual aid chapters across the world have the sometimes official, sometimes unofficial slogan, “neighbors helping neighbors.” And that’s what I saw more than anything else these past two weeks — at Ohio Valley Mutual Aid, or The Soup Kitchen, or Guntry, or Triadelphia United Methodist Church or any of our churches or just in our neighborhoods. It might look different for each neighbor, but being neighborly is also unmistakable when you see it.

Our Ohio Valley Mutual Aid operation was set up to run on volunteers. We might have received a bunch of donations, we might have raised (especially to us) a lot of money. But we literally had neither of those things when we started this operation. We built this operation to run on the one thing that we always have in ample supply and that we can always rely on. A week later we still run on the same thing — which isn’t supplies and money — it’s people.

Muck-out and in-home cleanup is one of the most labor-intensive parts of a flood. In West Virginia we unfortunately just know that. It can lag on for weeks and even months after a big flood. There are just jobs that heavy machines can’t do. And, it’s a thousand times easier for someone else to muck out the basement of your own home. In one week people took nearly 1,000 volunteer shifts with Ohio Valley Mutual Aid, taking time and energy out of their lives to get gross and sweaty and tired and muddy for people they probably didn’t know, for free.

That is incredible. I can’t process it yet.

4) This is going to end. And that’s OK.

Do we want to see that many people keep coming out every day? Yes.

Do the people and homes affected by the flood deserve to have those caring groups of neighbors come to their houses and help every week? Yes.

But will they? No.

The reality of the situation is that this won’t continue. Volunteers with drop off. We’ll go back to normal.

There are hosts of reasons. The adrenaline wears off. The sentiment dies down. This sweltering heat dome! We have to go back to work. The passage of time.

And that’s OK.

I like the process Ohio Valley Mutual Aid built (I’m biased, I helped build it). It’s by no means perfect. It seems to be pretty darn effective. It channels a LOT of volunteers, it helps a LOT of people. We tap into inspiration amid tragedy using almost exclusively pictures of people helping instead of pictures of our neighbors’ loss (this was intentional for Ohio Valley Mutual Aid). It integrates the county coordinated system while remaining truly grassroots. I like it, but it’s going to change, eventually go away. And that’s OK.

Out of town groups will come in for a while, a week, two, maybe longer. And that’s a huge boost offering specialized relief. And then they’ll leave. And that will feel like a gut punch after an uppercut. And that’s OK.

The sense of universal camaraderie will also fade. Something about the flood — maybe money, maybe leadership, maybe something else — instead of being unifying will show itself to be differentiating and divisive. And differences and divisions will trickle back into our community — differences in opinion, political differences, there’s so many differences to choose from.

We’ll form back into groups. We’ll end up fighting with each other, maybe even with some of the people we worked alongside this week.

That’s sad, but that’s also OK.

That’s OK because all that is normal and ordinary; and, for two weeks already we have done something extraordinary. In our time of need, our Ohio Valley community did this. And that is not something to bemoan losing (we certainly can).

But I think that is something to cherish that we had it, while we had it, while we have it, as long as we have it.

So, if you have three hours that you want to contribute to staying in this moment; if you still feel this way for one hour this coming week; if you have 30 minutes before your next appointment; feel free to take that moment. It is absolutely still needed. You know the places you can give that time by now. You know it will absolutely make the difference in someone’s life who needs it.

So thank you for doing that. And thank you for what we have done, in just two weeks.

Vincent DeGeorge is a community advocate and now community flood relief organizer who lives in East Wheeling.