You have probably always wondered what it is like to live in an empty Sam's Club. Who hasn't? Let me enlighten you.
Originally, when we deployed to this disaster, we just stayed in our rooms on campus. Since my team was in the Longmont DRC, it made for about a 2-hour commute every morning with traffic. That was unfortunate, but the living situation was nice. I had a dorm room to myself, a mini-fridge and sink in my room, and my car on campus. Then, we had to move out to make room for the new class of traditional NCCC that would be moving in. (Because of the furlough, they never actually moved in yet, but at the time that was the plan.)
The next place they moved us was the fairgrounds in Longmont. This was a pretty good set up as well. We were within walking distance of work, which meant a lot more sleep. Our living quarters were basically a giant auditorium. We were sharing the fairgrounds with the Southern Baptist Disaster Relief volunteers, so they had their cots set up on one side, and FEMA Corps (there were a ton of us, not just our team) was on the other side. The Baptists cooked breakfast and dinner for us and set out food to pack lunches, so it was nice not having to worry about that either. There were pretty nice showers and bathrooms, too. But that only lasted for about a week.
Then came Sam's Club. We weren't given a lot of details about it at first, so there were a few questions running through my mind, like, Are we just setting up cots in the aisles? Do we have to pack up our stuff in the morning before the customers get in? Will anyone notice if I steal bulk cases of Starbucks coffee?
When we arrived, I realized it was a Sam's Club that was no longer in business, and was empty except for some stacks of wooden pallets. So basically just a giant cement floor and a vast expanse of fluorescent lights. So I picked an open spot on the far wall and set up my cot.
The first night was a little rough. No one knew how to turn the lights off, so they stayed on the entire night. Since the they've been dimmed. It's never actually been dark in here. Another unfortunate piece of news was that there are no showers here, not that we expected showers in a Sam's Club. However, the Rec Center, about 5 minutes down the road, and the YMCA, about 15 minutes away have been nice enough to let us use their facilities.
It's been interesting to watch the evolution of the Sam's Club. At the beginning it was just cots lined up around the perimeter, but then people started innovating. There were a few shopping carts lying around so some people snagged them to put some of their stuff in or hang clothes on. People got very creative with the pallets. I used them as shelves because I didn't like having all my stuff on the floors. Since it never gets dark at night, people got the idea to put 2 pallets up vertically on each side of their cot where their head is and put another one on top, and then cover it with clothes so the light doesn't come in through the slats. Someone else decided to buy some PVC pipe, and make a roof frame over the pallets, which they then covered with the AmeriCorps NCCC table cloth that they use for recruiting events.
The major breakthrough came when the first person put up a tent in here. Campus has some tents to rent out, so a bunch of people got them. I'm using the one that I took camping. It's amazing what a difference the tent makes. Just to have some form of privacy. I don't like sleeping in giant concrete and metal rooms, either, so the tent makes it a bit more cozy. I have my cot set up inside, and a little chair to use as a shelf. The girls on my team arranged our tents in a little circle and we have our "courtyard" in the middle. It's pretty great.
There are some silly problems with living in a Sam's Club. Little things, like the fact that the sinks in the bathroom are automatic, so when you're washing your face the water is constantly turning on and off every time your hands move. Or the fact that the automatic doors sometimes stop working so you have to pry them open with your fingernails. Or the fact that it's a huge area, so making coffee takes 3 times as long in the morning just because you have to walk so far to fill the water then go to the coffee pot then come back and get ready, then go back when it's brewed. (This has since been solved, since our tent circle is right next to the outlet and hence the coffee pot.) Then there are some bigger problems like when the roof leaks in like 8 spots. Luckily I was not one of the people that woke up with water-filled shoes.
People in the community have been great, though. The only cooking facilities we have here are propane camp stoves (and I'm not sure you're really supposed to use those indoors), so our team mostly eats out or buys stuff at the grocery store conveniently located next door. Hearing of our situation, the grocery store and Panera Bread have both donated us food, and Kohl's is planning on baking for us as well. We had some donated water and snack food to begin with that I believe came from Sam's Club. And the locals have been absolutely amazing to us. Different organizations have set up schedules to come in and bring us dinner. Churches, schools, Girl Scouts and Cub Scouts have all come in to grill for us, have casserole night, a burrito bar, a crock-pot buffet. We've had delicious homemade pies. Random people drop in to bring us fresh-baked cookies. They've been really sweet to us.
Today at the grocery store, me and a couple girls were pooling our money to buy some groceries. We were standing at the check out counter pulling money out of our envelopes that carry our $15/day food stipend, and the lady behind us told the cashier that if we were short anything, she'd cover us. People stop us in the grocery store or the Rec Center to say thank you, school kids made us Thank You cards. The community has been awesome and we really, really appreciate it. There's nothing like some homemade green bean casserole and apple pie to make you feel a little bit more comfortable when you're living in a warehouse.
So what do you do all day when you're living in a Sam's Club? People have found some roller blades at thrift stores and some people had skateboards, so you take advantage of the giant concrete floor. I drink tea and crochet a lot, because I'm 80 years old. There's like 10 teams here, so you can chill around the dinner table with some nice company.
It's really not that bad. This is actually a bit nicer than Georgia was. The bathrooms are indoors, and it's an actual toilet and not a smelly hole in the ground. Plus, it stays fairly warm in here, as opposed to my bedroom in Georgia, where my lotion and face wash would actually freeze in the bottle. The only part of it that makes it a bit hard to swallow is that the Reservists, who do the same job as me, are being put up in the Hampton Inn with about a $60 per diem to my $15. Not to mention the fact that they get paid. That's been one of the hard parts about this year, and probably one of the bigger differences between traditional NCCC and FEMA Corps. In traditional, you're usually working for non-profits. Basically, if you weren't there to do the work, it probably wouldn't get done, because they don't have the funds to do it. It's easier to do that work for $3 an hour, because you feel like you're making a difference. In FEMA Corps, the work would still get done, they would just have to pay people to work 90 hour weeks. (Which really they should, right?) And they would have the money to do it. (Maybe not anymore.)
On the bright side, I've gained amazing work experience and life experience. And it's always hilarious to see the faces of the Reservists I'm training when they ask me where we're staying and I tell them "in a tent in an abandoned Sam's Club."
Plus how many people will be able to tell their grand kids about that time they lived in a makeshift tent city in an empty warehouse for 6 weeks?
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