Nearly a week after the flood, around three dozen volunteers gathered at a Walmart parking lot in Newport, Tennessee.
Kaylan Cole and Hannah Frazier organized the ragtag team of locals using Facebook groups and chats. They’ve been doing it all week. It’s sort of a loosely organized, beautiful mess of people pitching in however they can. And each day, like magic, people from farther and farther away are showing up to help.
“We really didn’t find them, they found us,” Cole said.
Officials here are wrapping up the immediate search and rescue phase. But as the flood waters recede, survivors in East Tennessee are left with new challenges like clearing debris and... the muck. Volunteers like Cole are going house to house, shoveling putrid and toxic mud out of homes before maggots and flies start swarming.
Back in the Walmart parking lot, Cole gave the group a game plan. They’re operating under the old adage that many hands make light work.
“We’re going to hit his garage and knock it out before we hit Hartford. It should take 30 minutes with this crew,” she said.
Cole and other folks share safety tips they’ve learned over the past few days. Stuff like -- wear gloves, don’t touch the mud, and if you do, sanitize your hands immediately because it’s mixed with sewage. Also, remember that homeowners here are still in shock and full of trauma. If they get mad or if they want to cry, listen to them.
Just before they break to head out, one volunteer add this:
“I’m also going to add: If you’re gonna stand around, we don’t need you. I mean, we need people working.”
The first job the volunteer group took on is cleaning out a flooded garage for an elderly couple. The couple entrusted their house to neighbor Ben England to be mucked out.
“So they left and I was sitting there looking at everything and like I don’t even know where to begin,” he said.
England knew he needed help, so he reached out to the group of volunteers he had seen on a Facebook post.
“I said, ‘Can somebody please come help me?’ I didn’t know what to do. I just got a shovel and started getting mud.” England said. “Then all these people showed up, just like that. That’s a testament to this neighborhood and the county.”
Now, a team of about a dozen are throwing everything into the yard: tires, exercise machines, and Christmas decorations. It’s all toxic trash now.
But there are moments of levity, even ankle-deep in the mud. One helper, Taylor Holt, unearthed a love letter, written in a flowery cursive script.
“That’s sweet,” Holt said, quietly reading the letter.
As the team moved from house to house, most everyone said the same thing: They are resilient. They will build back and somehow and someway, They will recover from this.
