There were dozens of black garbage bags and stacks of cardboard boxes in Charity Coleman’s front yard on Gee Street on Thursday, along with a bunch of household items that she had pulled out to dry in the sun.
“My folks have been in this house for nearly 40 years, so you accumulate a lot of stuff,” she said.
She was trying to figure out what could be salvaged and what will have to hauled away to the landfill.
“We’ve already cleared the front part of the yard once,” she said. “Now all these bags again.”
Amid the debris there sodden floor boards that had been ripped out and fluffy water-logged insultation. In flood damaged neighborhoods, the line between garbage and pieces of home is blurry.
Around the corner on Killewich Drive, bed frames and childrens’ toys were tossed together with wet cardboard into a dumptruck owned by the Alaska Department of Transportation, which will be helping to haul trash in the coming days. Crews from Central Council of the Tlingit and Haida Indian Tribes of Alaska have been hauling debris too.
The City and Borough of Juneau is also partnering with United Way to deploy additional volunteer clean up crews. Their volunteer center at Melvin Park in the Mendenhall Valley opened up on Thursday. The volunteer center will be open Friday 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. and Saturday and Sunday 9 a.m. to 6 p.m.
Salvation Army volunteer Carol Pitts was at the volunteer center on Thursday morning. She said people who wish to help can go there to be matched with a family in need.
“We’ll meet them with a smile, a cold glass of water and maybe a sandwich,” Pitts said.
The Salvation Army is running a food truck there for both volunteers and residents in the nearby flooded neighborhoods, which they’ll operate from noon to 6 p.m. each day. They plan to keep it running at least through Saturday.
Volunteers can also sign up online. As of Thursday afternoon, nearly 100 volunteers have been recruited, but according to a Thursday afternoon release from the City and Borough of Juneau, more volunteers are needed.
One of the people deploying volunteers on Thursday was Brenna Heintz. She lives in the Riverside Condos, which were severely damaged by last year’s flood. This year the building made it through the flood unscathed, but Heintz and one of her neighbors from the building wanted to help those affected by this year’s flood. She said they remember what it felt like in the early days and weeks of recovery after last year’s flood.
“Your brain is mush, and you’re really sad and you’re really scared,” she said. “It’s like, okay we know how that feels. Let’s see if we can be there to support in any way we can.”
More information about clean-up and other flood response resources can be found on the City’s flood resources page.
Correction: A previous version of this story misidentified Carol Pitts.
