Local Volunteers Help Michigan Residents Recover

Midland, Michigan city crews pick up debris from area homeowners. Homes that had never been flooded were damaged after 2 dams breached.

Midland, Michigan – Volunteers from New Sharon, Oskaloosa, and more from around central Iowa made the nine-hour trip to help individuals and families impacted by the breach of the Edenville and Sanford Dams.

The waters from the first breach at Edenville crashed into Sanford, helping to cause its failure, and the waters continued down the Tittabawassee River.

Steve Gerard, a captain with New Sharon Fire and Rescue, started making phone calls to contacts in the Midland, Michigan area.

The need was there, and over the course of a few days, a team was assembled of volunteers, made primarily of first responders and former first responders. Their initial hope is to help fellow first responders recover from the disaster so that those first responders can then focus on their community.

This has been the mission for over the past 15 years when then New Sharon Fire Chief Steve Gerard packed trailers with clothes and some other supplies and headed south to help.

Since all those years ago, New Sharon has been joined by Biloxi, Mississippi, and friends they have helped along the way.

After the collapse of two dams in middle Michigan, the team started the process of making the trip to help flooding victims there.

The phone calls landed at United Way of Midland County, and they began the process of feeding information to Gerard.

With no loss of life due to the flooding, Gerard complimented the first responders and emergency operations organizations on the job of warning individuals to the danger.

After 15 years of helping the victims of natural disasters, Gerard is surprised they are still doing this.

Their primary mission is to help first responders recover since those individuals have been busy helping their community.

“As we usually do, we started out, you know, looking to help the first responders. When they’re taken care of, they have neighbors that still need help, and so usually that’s what we do, we float next door to the next-door neighbors, and before you know it you’re working your way down the street,” said Gerard.

“We’re just trying to help them like if we were in the same situation, we know we would need help. That’s why we do it.”

On Sunday afternoon, an individual they had helped the day before informed them of a neighbor who could potentially need their help.

Today led them to a couple who own a restaurant and haven’t been able to be open due to COVID-19 restrictions. “They’ve been shut down, and I can honestly tell you they’re very worried, very depressed and, and they had not done a lot to the interior of their home,” Gerard explained.

They had suffered 21 inches of water inside their home. Upon inspection of the space between the walls, they found mold and mildew. “We told him, based on our knowledge, the last 15 years we’ve been working, you know what, if you don’t get this opened up and get it dried out, you’re going to have a serious mold problem”, Gerard explained to the homeowners.

So the team started to pull the sheetrock off the walls, and the insulation began pouring out the bottom of the walls. “We got it opened up. We’ve got it so that they can get some fans in there and get it starting to dry.”

“Hopefully, it put them on the path to start the rebuild process down the road,” Gerard explained. “You know, it’s kind of a compound issue. You’re dealing with a lot of emotions with no work, COVID-19, and flooding, people’s emotions are very hard.”

The group plans to stay and work in the Midland, Michigan area with plans to return to New Sharon on June 6th.