Volunteer Diary: Day 4

Volunteer's diary, part 1: "Hot, muddy and completely rough awaits you"

Volunteer Diary: Day 2, “Good Camp”

Volunteer Diary: Day 3, “Distribution of Work”

The morning of the new day in the camp began as usual: water procedures, breakfast, formation of teams, distribution of work. We go to the first address where we received the order - there is no one here, there are only ruins on the site. And you can’t start work without a preliminary discussion with the owner. Later we find out that no one has lived in the house that stood here before the flood for a long time. The camp coordinator gives us a new address where help is needed - the house of a lonely grandmother. Here you need to remove the floors and clean out the silt.

Marina Dmitrievna, that’s the name of the mistress of the house, is constantly losing her nerves. She told us various stories, while her mood was constantly changing: she either laughed or cried. “And one man, a terrible drunk, turned his house into a hangout. And after the flood, he destroyed his house. Many of them do this. Just to get new housing and make a new hangout there too,” the grandmother said about her neighbors.



“Are you guys volunteers?” a woman shouted to me from the house opposite as I was taking out a pile of rotten boards. “Help us. We need to open the door and take out the refrigerator.” The summer house in which she still had her appliances was practically destroyed by the flood; the back wall was destroyed. It turned out to be too dangerous for a non-professional to climb there. We advised the woman to call the Ministry of Emergency Situations. “I barely lost my legs that night. The water rose in about 30 minutes. We tried to drive a car, but we had to abandon it,” the owner of the house said.

After noon - lunch, the whole team went to the catering point. They fed us borscht and buckwheat. “Do you want to drink? I’ll find you green tea now, I just have one bag left,” the cook told me conspiratorially and handed me a bag of tea. We returned to the house with renewed vigor; all that was left was to remove the floors in the last room. A team from the Ministry of Emergency Situations came to our aid and the work went faster.



Before leaving, Maria Dmitrievna became emotional, kissed the volunteers and thanked them for their help. “I will never forget you,” she said after us.

When I went to Krymsk, the media broadcast a statement from the Ministry of Emergency Situations that by the end of the week it was planned to completely clear the city from the consequences of the flood. I was even afraid that I was going in vain. At the same time, almost a week has already passed, and on some streets, on Sovetskaya, for example, where we went to the next site, you can go into absolutely any yard - there is enough work for everyone.



At the end of the working day, my whole body aches. But after numerous kind words from local residents, you don’t notice any fatigue. After the volunteers’ visit, their mood improves; at least for a short time, they forget about the flood and what problems lie ahead.