February 2008
The Rolling Home
So, here we are in 2008. Our last update was August of
2007. At that time, John was deployed with FEMA to flooding in
east Texas. He spent three months from Tyler, to Waco, to Athens, to
Jacksonville, Huntsville, a quick trip to Houston to do damage
assessments for Tropical Storm Erin. Then another quick trip to
Beaumont, Texas to do damage assessments for Hurricane Humberto.
We then went back to Waco to our Joint Field Office to wait for the
declaration for TS Erin. It took a while, so we did a rotation
back to Brackettville on Tuesday, October 2. We got home Tuesday
evening and the disaster was declared that evening. We left on
Sunday and took the rig up to Merkle, TX just west of Abilene.
Those of you who have traveled I 20 across Texas know the Flying J in
Tye. Merkel is the next town west of Tye.
We spent a bit more than a month shuttling between Merkel and
Hamlin. Hamlin is about 30 miles north of Merkel and 45 miles northwest
of Abilene. The folks in both towns were just incredible. They
helped each other and were so good to our FEMA folks. We had more food
than we could eat, finally having to ask the locals to stop bringing
food to us. The town of Hamlin was the worst hit of the two. We
spent about three weeks there in a community center that had been in
the flooded area. One of the local guys who works for the Texas
DOT smoked a turkey and brought it to us.
It was an interesting deployment. John managed three different
Mobil Disaster Recovery Centers. His was the last center to close
from the disaster that was TS Erin. We left Hamlin on November 7
and traveled in one day back to Brackettville and Fort Clark Springs.
Since arriving back in Brackettville, we have been busy building our
home base Casita. It is a one bedroom, one bath, kitchen, living room
and utility room home that lives beside the RV under our 40 x 60 roof
over. Pictures when its finished! Libby has been busy
sanding drywall while John does the mud work. The electrical is
done, the rough plumbing is done and all the rooms have drywall hung
and mudded except for the bathroom. In there, we are building a four
foot square shower with a bench. It will be tiled.
We have done all the work ourselves. We had the slab poured while
John was deployed in Eagle Pass for a tornado last spring.
Oh yeah, we also bought the lot next door when our friends Kit and
Jerry Bertelson move over to unit 37 to a lot with a roof over.
Now we have more room for John's amateur radio antennas and a buddy pad
too! In fact, our friends, Dave and Sally
Stribling will be here tomorrow to park on that pad and help us with
the finish on the walls. (Dave used to have a drywall business)
Later this month, we are heading to Big Bend again, Kit and Jerry and
Dave and Sally will be going with us. Then we go to Alpine for our
third Texas Cowboy Poetry gathering before returning to the Fort for
the Ft Clark Springs Festival, the second weekend of March.
The large tornado outbreak last week in the South would have been
another deployment but John is unavailable until the Casita is
finished. He has deployed to eight disasters since going to work
for FEMA in 2005 after Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. He has
deployed to four floods, a wild fire, a hurricane and two
tornadoes. He has also done damage assessments for tropical
storms and the only hurricane to hit the U.S in the last two years.
We will try to get more updates online. We have been very busy here
building our little stick and brick. BTW, we have HD from
Directv. The Superbowl was great in HD!
We expect to do some traveling this summer, especially since we have
another grandchild (number five) on the way in May in Florida.