Feedback: ‘Helping Hands’ Part 2

Debbie Moody has plenty of her own home repair to do, but she’s staying busy in someone else’s yard.

The north country woman is spending the week rebuilding other people’s homes in Gulfport, Mississippi.

It’s ironic since she’s got a lot of work to do in Tupper Lake, where her house burned down this past winter.

“They say pay it forward. I think i’m paying it forward,” said Moody.

Moody and a dozen other volunteers from Ogdensburg’s First Presbyterian Church are doing anything they can to help as thousands of people, still living in FEMA trailers, prepare to lose their homes all over again.

The trailers were never meant to be permanent solutions.

They’re made with high levels of chemicals that are dangerous for your health.

Now FEMA says if you’re still living in one nearly three years after Katrina hit, it’s time to get out.

The deadline is June 1 and that has volunteers from around the country working around the clock to get more people into new homes fast.

“It started with a church and a church and a church first looking out for their church family members. And then, well, what about my next door neighbor and so on,” said Martha-Lee Bohn, outreach coordinator of the Presbytery of Missippi.

It spread 1,500 miles away to the First Presbyterian Church in Ogdensburg.

Now that all of the financial assistance from the Red Cross and Salvation Army is expected to be spent by October, help from volunteers is critical.

“The American people take care of their own,” said Lynn Lanier, who lost his home during Hurricane Katrina.

While work to restore the region comes along slowly, lending a helping hand has become an endless mission for the group from Ogdensburg.

“The people in Tupper Lake have been so good to me in my time of need. I want to do something to help other people,” said Moody.

In Part 3 of Alex’s special series, she’ll visit the families the church group has helped and show you just how much a dozen people really can do.

See Part 1 of Alex’s series.

See Part 2:

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