Mitigation

Normally our team works in Disaster Survivor Assistance. We go door to door doing outreach, registering survivors, and doing case inquiries for those who have already registered.
Since Hurricane Sandy happened so long ago, the DSA stage of the disaster is over. The project we're working on is brand new for us. We're updating the flood database for the Hazard Mitigation Grant Program and looking at homes that have had repetitive losses. In other words, we're going to the homes who've had more than one insurance claim for flooding (ex: they got hit by Irene and then again by Sandy) and we collect data on them and enter it into the database. The purpose is to figure out which of the homes are draining the money from the National Flood Insurance Program, and find out how we can mitigate - either raising the home or buying it out and turning the land into public space, not allowing anyone to build there because of the flood risk.

As far as what I actually do.....our days consist of either field work or office work. We go out into the field to inspect houses. We drive to our assigned areas and complete worksheets on each repetitive loss house, finding out what kind of foundation and structure it is, in what neighborhood, if it's elevated, etc. We gather all of this information from the street, and only talk to homeowners when they happen to be outside, so it's a lot less face-to-face interaction than we were used to in DSA. When we don't go out into the field, we're in the office entering the data that we collected from the inspections, looking up tax records, or plotting the homes on special maps to show what flood zone they're in.

At first I wasn't too thrilled about the work, but it turns out it's not so bad. Except for the heat wave when we first got here, the weather has been so much better than it was in our previous deployments, so I''m not dripping in sweat after 5 minutes in the field. We're also working in a neighborhood on the beach, so we get to see a lot of nice houses and sailboats docked right next to them. There are about four other FEMA Corps teams here as well, so the office environment is fun, and there's tons of people to hang out with when we have free time because we're all staying in the same hotel.

And I must admit, it is kind of nice to do some office work. I'm getting to brush up on excel, that's for sure. I was ridiculously proud of myself the other day for figuring out (all by myself!) how to make a spreadsheet that would add up the team's work stats for the week instead of me doing it manually! Oh the things I get excited about these days :/

One of the problems is that the crews are behind schedule (since we got kept longer in Oklahoma than they were planning) and now we have to work 10-hour days Monday through Friday. Between that and all our AmeriCorps duties, it doesn't leave a lot of time to enjoy the Big Apple. But that doesn't stop us from squeezing in some fun when we can. I'll post soon about all our exciting escapades in NYC.