What I did this morning

[jmowreader]

I had to go to a customer's house today to check on a roof claim. After I got done there, they wanted me to go to the store to report on what I found.

The manager called me in. "You worked a relief camp during Hurricane Andrew, right?" (It's not in my file, so apparently what they did was went through the building this morning asking if anyone had ever done relief operations during a disaster and my name came up.) "What I want you to do is, sit down right now and figure out everything we should send to Louisiana. Don't count building materials, and don't pull anything yet. (The District Manager) wants to have a list of stuff ready so when corporate calls us and tells us where to send it, we'll be ready."

This is what I put down:

trash pumps

generators (actually, we don't HAVE that many generators left; when corporate found out that Katrina was building up out in the ocean, they told us to pull every generator 4000 watts or larger that runs on gasoline and ship it to Texas to be staged for Louisiana, so now we're looking at sending down those dinky-ass one-k generators you can carry around in your hand.)

gas cans, preferably with gas in them--we know how to ship hazmat, so that's not a big problem

pressure washers and every drop of pressure washer concentrate

plywood and pressure-treated 2x6s (I know he asked for it not to be included, but plywood and 2x6s come in handy for lots of other things, like building ice houses; one of our biggest problems in Homestead was the ice melting a day after it came in, and a series of ice houses would have helped matters greatly)

tarps

everything on the cleaning supplies aisle

get all the 5-gallon bucket lids we can come up with. We stock more buckets than lids, so the lids are the important part for this. Take as many buckets as we have lids, fill all of them with tap water, add maybe two teaspoons of swimming pool chlorine to be sure there will be chlorine in the water when it gets to the Gulf Coast, lid them and palletize them 48 to the skid. Do the same thing with the construction-site water jugs. (I don't care whether it will be drinkable when it gets there. Drinkable water isn't the only thing they need--they also need water for hygiene and sanitation; a skid of heavily chlorinated tap water will come in mighty handy for that. If it is drinkable when it arrives, so much the better.) Also order about ten racks of bottled water in 5-gallon jugs, palletize all the water, return the racks empty and ship the water to the Gulf Coast. That I know will arrive in potable condition.

all the swimming-pool chemicals--not for pools, but because swimming pool chlorine with a little water in it makes a fine substitute for supertropical bleach

all the buckets, garbage cans, pails, empty paint cans, paint trays, and anything else we can scrape together that will hold cleaning products

Box of Rags and Roll of Rags, plus any actual rags we have

all the 5-pound and larger boxes of framing nails and roofing nails--no finishing nails need apply, thank you very much. Also all the drywall screws and deck screws we've got, 5-pound boxes and larger.

any kind of protective gear we can muster--cement boots, work gloves, rubber gloves, masks, Tyvek suits, raingear, if it's there I want it.

anything battery-operated that produces light. We've got a shitload of "Madagascar Jungle Lanterns" that run off AA batteries. We put a couple of Duracell AAs in each one, bundle them with a handful of fresh batteries in a ziplock bag, and the refugees have indoor lighting. This is important. You've got to try to alleviate despair here, for despair kills as readily as dehydration or sanitation.

bungee cords

hand tools

reciprocating saws and blades

concrete saws

shovels, sledgehammers, rakes and pickaxes

our backhoe with an operator

our skid-steer loader with an operator

extension cords and portable lighting

garden hoses

jet pumps

ladders of all kinds

air movers

industrial fans

we still have some Sqwincher energy drink left. I said throw that in too. Once we get a water supply up and running children are going to start coming down with scurvy because there's no way to get vitamin C to them; this shit has vitamin C in it, so it could prove useful. And it tastes kinda like kool-aid, which should help improve the children's morale just a touch. Once again, despair avoidance.

I'll probably think of other things to send down at work tonight.

I had a transient desire to ship them all the refrigerators, freezers, wine coolers, water coolers with refrigeration compartments and anything else that can cool milk and insulin. Right now there's no real good way to deal with large items such as major appliances in the disaster area. Perhaps later, once they've got the water down to the point where you can see dirt in NOLA, we'll send these.

And for all you HD haters, you may appreciate this: There are currently no Home Depot stores in the state of Louisiana. All nine of them are total losses, need to have everything in them except for the cantilever racking pulled down and hauled away, and we know that at least one of them is gone. Gone as in collapsed. These stores are built with prestressed concrete walls, so they're plenty strong. We don't know about casualties and deaths among our associates yet, but we can only assume there is some. There's definitely some in the collapsed store. (On second thought...you fucking better NOT appreciate that.)

[smurfygirl]

1. great list

I will copy and keep for others asking about what to send.

[meganmonkey]

2. Awesome

Good for you :)

[GreenPartyVoter]

3. Well WOW! Keeping kicked!

-----------------------------------------------------
Save New Orleans, then save this country!
http://timeforachange.bluelemur.com/electionreform.htm

[MissMarple]

4. Good for you guys. I won't mind shopping at Home Depot now.

Well, except for the accident policy that settles with customers but does not change the falling on you status of things on the high shelves. Please tell me that is an urban myth. :)

[soup]

5. jmowreader, thank you.

Good list. I'm rocking my granddaughter right now and it's hard to type, but wanted to say thank you.

Are contractor bags on the list? Did I miss that?

[MissMarple]

6. Question:

In your personal opinion, why do you think no national guard or supplies have actually made it into New Orleans and Mississippi to help folks and maintain order? What supplies have gotten in were pushed hurriedly off of helicopters and were not enough to really help the suffering. The national guard I saw yesterday were keeping folks at the Superdome from rushing the buses, which, although there were quite a few of them, were clearly inadequate in number.

Were other FEMA efforts so ineffective? And I know that Andrew helped galvanize FEMA to do better.

Thanks for any response. :)

[MissMarple]

7. Just a little bump for those who want to send things.