Literacy Profile

Calla Hardiman

SED 507

Literacy Profile

One non-academic literacy that I have is in the realm of flood and disaster recovery.  After my first semester as an undergrad at UMass Amherst, I decided I really did not like it there and wanted to take a semester off. I joined the Americorps on a whim with my roommate (who would later become my husband).  We joined the Americorps VISTA and moved out to Cedar Rapids, Iowa, to do disaster relief and recovery after the city experienced a record-breaking flood.  The floodwaters had risen close to thirty feet, inundating the first two floors of almost every house and business in Cedar Rapids.

            When I first arrived, I had absolutely no prior knowledge about disaster relief.  I underwent a brief orientation about safety and health hazards, and then was immediately released to the field to learn first hand by trial and error the various steps in disaster relief.  My first experience in the field was a house that had been flooded up to the second floor, and none of the family’s personal articles or furniture had been moved or touched.  The refrigerator was still full of leftovers, condiments, and floodwater.  The bookshelves were crammed with soggy moldy books, and there were toys, stuffed animals, family photos, clothes, couches, blankets and electronics strewn about and soaking wet.  I was handed a laundry hamper and told to “muck” the house.  I did not know what that meant, so I looked to see whatever other people were doing.  Apparently, “mucking” meant filling the hamper with debris, walking it out of the house, and dumping it onto the sidewalk for “the claw”  (a large mechanical claw that picked debris up and put it into a garbage truck) to pick up later.  After doing this for a while I developed a system to best get rid of as much debris as possible.  I used a shovel to fill my hamper with debris before carrying it out.

            After I had mucking down and the house was finally empty of debris, furniture, appliances and carpeting, I was told to help “gut” the house.  I was given a crowbar and told to remove all plaster, drywall, cabinets, countertops, nails and ceilings until the house was just foundation and studs.  After doing this for a while, I figured out the best system to take down the walls and ceilings using a crowbar and really developed a knack for it.  Then the house was to be swept clean.  If the studs were rotted, I learned to replace them with new studs, and I learned how to do mold treatment on studs that remained in place. 

            The third step in disaster recovery I was to lean was “rebuilding,” which was the most complicated step in a lot of ways because it involved multiple steps.  I learned how to hang drywall, mix “mud,”  which is another word for joint compound, apply the mud over the screws and seam lines, sand the mud once dry (and re-mud and re-sand at least 2 times), and eventually paint. After mudding and sanding came painting, and sometimes plastering.  I was one of the few VISTAs that was trained in Venetian plastering, so I ended up doing this in a lot of houses.

            After my first month on the job, our Americorps VISTA got a new influx of volunteers, and I was selected to train them in how to muck, gut and rebuild.  It amazed me how in such a short period of time, I mastered the disaster relief and recovery skills enough to train and oversee new VISTAs. 

            Another important job I had in the flood recovery program was garage demolition.  Myself and a group of four other VISTAs were known as the go-to people for garage demolition, and we did quite a few garages.  Because garages do not have foundations, they float in floods and get snagged on things.  So my team and I developed the best way to demolish garages that had floated into treetops (and one that landed on top of a minivan), which was ultimately done by attaching a chain or rope around the center beam of the  inner structure of the garage beneath the roof, and to use a saws-all to cut all other support beams out of the way (which requires balance when atop a tree or minivan).  After attaching the cord to the center-beam, the five of us would hold onto the cord and pull it down.  Then we would shovel the debris into the road for the claw.

            My literacy in flood recovery had a great impact on the rest of my life. Not only am I able to muck, gut and rebuild, but I also know I am capable of training and leading other people.  The Americorps was the first place where I was ever really in a leadership role, and this has translated into my life in countless ways, and has even influenced my desire to teach one day.  I know that having had this experience will come in handy when I teach simply because I felt so able to learn, capable to work, and confident to lead all from this experience.