Volunteers repair Hammond, Louisiana, home badly damaged in storm 8 years ago

When a large tree falls on your home during a storm, the immediate aftermath of clean-up and repairs can be a brief ordeal. For Carmen Mapes of Hammond, Louisiana, however, this became an eight-year ordeal. She and her son have used tarps on the roof and buckets to catch rain inside their home since then.

Those hard days are over, thanks to the Ginger Ford Northshore Fuller Center for Housing, donated shingles from World Vision and teams of enthusiastic volunteers from Presbyterian Disaster Assistance and college groups from Southeastern Louisiana University, Alma College in Michigan and University of Redlands in California, as well as a team of Amish volunteers who came down earlier this year.

“It’s been a long journey,” Mapes told the Hammond Star on Wednesday. “I pinch myself every day.”

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complete story and photo gallery

RELATED: The Higher Ground on the Bayou Flood Recovery Build

The Ginger Ford Northshore Fuller Center for Housing is hosting the Higher Ground on the Bayou Flood Recovery Build April 24-27, 2017, and needs volunteers. If you’d like to learn more or want to register to work in this area twice damaged by historic flooding in 2016, click here.