Ruffin It Together: Helping Moore, OK

Seven people from Sweetwater, six from our church, recently went to Moore, OK to help with the cleanup for a couple of days. We got connected through the Methodist Church's relief organization.

The devastation is really beyond words. Our job was to gut a house. What we found out when we got there was that "gut" meant demolish everything down to the foundation and move it to within 15 feet of the curb. The city of Moore was picking up the debris with large equipment from the street.

We were told that insurance pays for the demolishing between $3,000 and $8,000. But now, the families are able to use that money to build a safe room in their new reconstruction. Safe rooms cost about $5000 extra to build.

The house we got assigned to was also being worked on by a group of FCA from Kansas and Missouri. The other group left at lunch on Friday. They had been in Moore all week. We finished that house (with a little help from the dozier operator busting up the foundation next door) by the end of the day Friday.

Saturday morning we went to another house that had been torn down but the roof remained to be drugged to the curb. We worked with two men from Moore and group of ladies joined us from Cushing, OK. We were able to clean that house all the way down to the foundation by 11:00am.

We then returned our tools and cleaned up and headed home.

We asked the director of UMCOR in Moore how long they planned to be set up there. (We thought we might try to get another group to go again.) His response is very telling of how bad it is there: 2 1/2 years.