South Carolina: The First Installment

Hello, my name is Angel Steckman. I am a junior in the Carpentry Program at DCTS. This is my first trip on BC Cares and we are in Lake City, South Carolina. We traveled here yesterday in two vans and a truck. There are 14 students; 9 Building Construction students and 5 Carpentry students. Adults that have come along are:

 Ms. Connie Kennedy (counselor) with us on her 7^th trip

 Mr. Carroll (Carpentry instructor) on his 7^th trip

 Mrs. Johnson (DCTS retiree) on her 2^nd trip

Mrs. Deiling (Instructional coach) on her 13^th trip

Mr. Brightbill (BCT instructor) on his 14^th out of state BC Cares trip

We are staying at a very nice church in Lake City called Lake City First Baptist Church. We are staying in rooms that they have set aside for volunteers. The damage that was done here was caused by two storms that occurred in the last few years. The main storm they call the “Great Storm” in 2015 when a low pressure system sat over this area and dumped rain for days. Almost one year later Hurricane Matthew hit the area and caused even more flooding and wind damage. This area was on the southern edge of Florence so the damage that we are repairing is older.

This morning, we started off working on two jobs in the area that are a few miles apart. The first job was to replace windows and several doors. Mr. Carroll led a crew of students who removed old window sashes that were no longer weather proof and they installed new replacement windows. One of the seniors worked with a junior and used skills that he learned last year to teach the junior how to install a new exterior door and hardware, making Mr. Carroll very proud that he retained hard-earned skills from previous years.

The other crew, led by Mr. Brightbill went to a house that needed a new roof. Much of the original shingles had severe roof damage from 2016. Several tarps had been placed on much of the roof. We had to carefully remove the layers of tarps to ensure that the roof deck had not been compromised. We then were able to strip 20 square of shingles from the roof, remove the old underlayment, install new high performance underlayment and ice guard and we were able to re-shingle about 1/3 of the roof. Zildjian, a CD East Football player carried many bundles of shingles up the ladder. It was quite a workout.

Some of the students worked inside the home where the floors had been severely compromised. They removed rotten subfloor and installed new to make the house much safer.

There is still a good bit of work to be done on both jobs tomorrow, before we move on to other projects. I am glad that I had the chance to work on the roof today, I  am a bit afraid of heights. Knowing I am going to be a carpenter, I knew that I had to get over my fear. I started on the ground but decided I had to put fear aside and get up there. I was scared on the ladder but Mr. Brightbill talked me through the process of climbing the ladder and accessing the roof, but the scariest part was climbing back down. I am proud to say that I did both successfully, several times!!!