Volunteers help Quincy residents tackle flood cleanup

April 02--QUINCY -- Karen Albanese was in Savanna, Ga. for her daughter's bachelorette party when she turned on the television and saw live footage from Post Island Road. Several feet of ocean water filled the street she has called home since 1996, and she said she knew to expect to find a lot of damage.

Albanese has lived out of a city-funded apartment since a nor'easter clobbered Houghs Neck and much of the South Shore on March 2 and 3, destroying nearly everything in the basement and first floor of her home.

Between moving into the temporary space and dealing with insurance companies, Albanese said the process has felt overwhelming.

But Albanese and her neighbors started tackling the cleanup process this weekend with help from the disaster-relief nonprofit Team Rubicon. Volunteers ripped out water-soaked drywall and flooring, hauled away damaged belongings and debris and cut up fallen trees. Crews started working Friday, and expected to wrap up their operation by Monday afternoon.

The volunteers, many of them military veterans and first responders, worked free-of-charge for more than a dozen homeowners in Quincy and Milton who had their property damaged by extreme flooding, strong winds and toppled trees.

Albanese and her daughter, Theresa Vogel, stopped by the house on Sunday to see volunteers' progress and to drop off an Easter basket to thank them. Albanese poked her head inside the house to see the first floor, which volunteers had completely gutted.

"It's so amazing. It really means a lot," said Vogel, of Weymouth, who went through a box containing old newspapers and a 2005 Red Sox calendar. "We're over the moon that this organization is here to help, and we didn't even know it existed."

U.S. Marine Corps veterans Jake Wood and William McNulty founded the nonprofit Team Rubicon in 2010 following the massive Haiti earthquake. More than 75,000 volunteers have since responded to about 240 operations, including Hurricanes Harvey, Irma, and Maria, and the recent wildfires in Southern California.

On top of helping displaced families get back into their homes, Team Rubicon also helps veterans find a renewed sense of purpose --which is vital as they leave the military and return to civilian life.

Team Rubicon Incident Coordinator Jeremiah Kunze, a Quincy native who grew up near Houghs Neck, said the operation attracted 34 volunteers from nine states -- including from as far away as Arizona -- and veterans from every branch of the military.

Homeowners needing assistance got referred to Team Rubicon from the Massachusetts Volunteer Organizations Active in Disasters, which collected requests for help during the Resource Recovery Center in Quincy last month. Kunze said volunteers also go around and do their own assessments, and that triggers the "gray shirt effect."

"A homeowner sees volunteers in gray shirts working and they come up and say, 'can you take a look at my house when you're done?,'" Kunze, of Chelmsford, said.

Kunze said volunteers pull out all damaged materials so that a contractor can come in and start working immediately, saving homeowners both time and money on demolition. He said removing the wet drywall, insulation and flooring also allows houses to dry out before mold spreads and creates more problems.

"This expedites home repairs and gets people back in their homes sooner," he said.

Team Rubicon also uses the same incident management system as the Federal Emergency Management Agency, and Kunze said the information volunteers collect can prove useful for communities to use when applying for disaster aid.

Kunze said the city of Quincy was a tremendous help, and paid for the volunteers to stay at Howard Johnson hotel, where the group also ran a command center and coordinated manpower and equipment for each job.

Volunteer John Cauley, a U.S. Army veteran and retired engineer, has traveled around the country with Team Rubicon, including to Texas after Hurricane Harvey. He said the scale of that storm was much larger, but the experiences of individual homeowners are often the same following natural disasters, such as floods.

"Their lives have been turned upside down. To see all your belonging in the street is a horrible thing," he said.

Albanese's neighbor, Kevin Gracey, is able to live in his house despite having eight inches of water on the first floor and throughout the basement. He said Team Rubicon volunteers helped him get "half a ton" of sand out of his basement -- a project he said he was dreading trying to get done on his own.

"They've been fabulous -- ultra polite and ultra considerate. It's wonderful," Gracey said. "This has been such a big help to us."

To learn more about Team Rubicon, visit https://teamrubiconusa.org.

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