Thunder 1

I remember sitting in our Rehoboth beach house one evening watching the news on TV with Raven 4. There were stories of storms and mild flooding and we all watched attentively with hopeful eyes.

No one hopes for a disaster. That's just crazy. But here in AmeriCorps we hope for the opportunity to help when disaster strikes. Being called for disaster is one of, if not thee most exciting possibilities of the AmeriCorps experience. At least I always thought so. And since the day I was inducted into this program I prayed for the opportunity to serve on disaster.  First, disaster has to strike. The staff has been telling us all year long that disasters have been rare since Hurricane Katrina (during which NCCC teams were 1 of the first groups to respond). A weekly disaster list is sent out every single week. Every TL picks their top two Corps Members & if your name happens to be at the top of the list on a week when disaster strikes you're eligible to be pulled from your team to join a composite team to go serve.

When 2nd round started this was the plan; Raven 4 was going to stay at the Point for two weeks, working at Iron Hill Park in Delaware. Then head to Boston for 6 weeks to work on the Mystic River. We were all pretty excited. Then we finished our first day at Iron Hill park and did not know how we were going to last two weeks. Little did we know that none of us would have to. After our 2nd day of work I went back to the Point to learn that I was selected to be part of a composite team that would be headed south to help out with tornado relief. It was a Tuesday. I was no longer Raven 4. I was from then on, Thunder 1.

We left Maryland on May 5th, spent the night in Tennessee, and arrived in Tuscaloosa, Alabama on the 6th. The Crimson Tide was rocked my tornadoes recently and we are here mainly to run a volunteer center. We also go out into the community and do assessments. We've also done cleanups and debris removal. Is being on disaster everything I thought it would be? Well, yeah. This is exactly what I joined this program to do. To directly help people and places that need it the most. It's nice getting to know different Corp Members and being on a new team, even though I miss Raven 4 like a big baby misses their blanky. It's awesome being in Alabama because I've never been here before. I'm experiencing the south for the first real time and it's pretty cool. But mostly, I'm glad to be sitting on the other end of the help hotline. I'm glad to be in the midst of the need, with my team, Getting Things Done.