Persevere Goes to Florida

Around ten o'clock last Friday, Ben and I were getting ready to go to bed when Bill Jr. called and asked if we wanted to go to Florida for a couple days to help with the recent tornados. We said we would be right over. After a bit of research and some quick packing, we were on the road.(We left around one in the morning) When we reached Florida, we started calling around to get hooked into a command center. After figuring out what the plan of action was, it was already getting pretty late. After a long day of cutting downed trees, driving all night, and networking all day, I was glad to finally get some sleep.

We ended up going to the town of Lady Lake. We were working in a trailer park that had been hit hard. It was easy to pick out the path of the actual tornado as there was just a swath of destruction cut throught the landscape. We started cutting right away and helped clear tons of debris. We difinetly made a huge impact in the community, the short time we were there.

One job sticks out the most in my mind though. There was an elderly woman with a large tree branch on top of her house that her neighbors were concerned would fall through the trailer. The police, along with her neighbors, had been trying to convince her to leave the trailer but she refused. When we showed up and told her that we were going to remove the branch and the fallen trees out back, she was more than happy to leave so that we could get the job done. After it was done, she was a completely different person. She was out and about, walking around the neighborhood and talking to her neighbors. We came back the next day and removed her collapsed carport as well. We helped out a lot of people when we were down there, but I will never forget the positive change in her demeanor after we had removed that tree.

Paul