Sep 20, 2008 9:53 pm US/Central
Fort Worth Workers Home From Ike Cleanup
FORT WORTH (CBS 11 / TXA 21) ―
It was the end of a weeklong journey for Fort Worth Crews Saturday, a homecoming from Hurricane Ike.
Just hours after the storm made landfall nearly 50 workers from the City of Fort Worth volunteered to load up and head south to Houston.
Task Force commander Paul Bounce was surprised by what he saw. "You drove in you've never seen a city that was so black. No lights, people were cooking over their fire pits, their barbeque pits. There was smoke everywhere. It was just like being in a third world country.
Keith Norman agrees. "You get outside in the neighborhood and you see the people with no lights, no water, trees everywhere, and roofs are torn down. And you're just speechless."
Their job was simple, and massive. Clear debris, pile it, push it to one side. They worked in twelve hour shifts. At first, they tried to take debris to landfills, but waits there were well over an hour and a half. Crews knew they had too much to do. When power allowed, the people they helped sent emails. "Seeing those (City of Fort Worth) longhorns on the side of the truck", one woman wrote, "gives me hope we'll get through this."
Paul Bounce said that inspired the team. "We read that to the men the day that came in and, honestly, there were tears in the guys' eyes."
And the crews brought back memories of storm ravaged people who, according to Keith Norman "Want to stay and want to build until it all comes together. And that is the perfect example of what they call a Texan."
Shortly before their arrival back to Fort Worth, the crew that returned Saturday passed another caravan of their co-workers heading south to Houston to continue to help those Texans.
(© MMIX, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.)
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