Getting ready to roll: shower trailer makes its debut

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Mucking out a basement following a river having breached its banks is a dirty job. A Mike Rowe-type of “Dirty Job.” Mud, housing debris, mud, river debris, and mud; that is often the recipe brewing in the basement.

At the end of the day, an Emergency Response Team (ERT) or Volunteers in Mission (VIM) member finds relief from their mucking duties in the form of a shower. But often that “shower” comes from a garden hose or another improvised solution.

On Saturday, June 9, about 50 people gathered at St. Paul’s United Methodist Church (UMC) in Oneida for a Roll-Out Event, unveiling a six-stall mobile shower facility for the UMVIM of the Northeastern Jurisdiction (NEJ).

In the beginning

The trailer has been nine months in the making. But the vision was given to David Woodcock about four years ago.

According to the National Hurricane Center at Florida International University in Miami, Fla., Hurricane Katrina was one of the deadliest and most destructive hurricanes in United States history. Thousands of individuals responded to the hardest hits areas for clean-up and rebuilding, and among them was Woodcock.

Staying in a “tent city,” Woodcock noticed shower trailers and thought they were a “great idea,” he said.

He brought the idea to CT Express, a trucking company in Durhamville – just outside Oneida, and the seed was planted.

On hand for the Roll-Out Event of the NEJ VIM Shower Trailer are (from left): Mohawk District Superintendent the Rev. Sung Ho Lee; the Rev. Chris Kinnell, pastor of Christ UMC in Sherrill; Steve Cross; Earl Woods; David Woodcock; and the Rev. Brian Fellows, pastor of St. Paul's UMC in Oneida. Photo by Christian Vischi

Then came Hurricane Irene and Tropical Storm Lee that “devastated Vermont and New York state with floods,” said Woodcock. “I then talked with Greg (Forrester, NEJ VIM coordinator,) and he said the biggest need was showers.”

For mid- and long-term recovery efforts, especially involving youth, Forrester told Woodcock it's difficult to get teams when there are no shower facilities available, Woodcock said.

When Woodcock went back to CT Express about the availability of a trailer, they were watching a video of a house floating down the Schoharie River.

“I got this trailer,” were the key words Woodcock heard, and the project was born.

No blueprints? Make them up as you go along

Earl Woods and Steve Cross know every inch of the trailer. Of the estimated 2,000 hours it took to complete the trailer, Woods and Cross have recorded more than 1,100 of them, including over 75 percent of the labor involved.

And that meant starting from scratch.

“As Earl said, you don’t just get on the Internet and say, ‘How do I build a shower trailer?’” said Woodcock. (A Google search brought up 36,800,000 results, with no blueprints within the first four pages of the search.)

To start the project, Woods did “a lot of research on who builds what and how they build it,” and that solved some problems. But “getting everything to fit,” Cross said with a laugh, was also an issue.

His passion for the project comes from extensive volunteering after Hurricane Katrina, said Woods.

“This was a project close to home, to take care of people close to home. … It is the perfect project to help others.”

An everyday (volunteer) job

Cross and Woods

Woods and Cook worked every day, Monday through Friday, on the project. They helped install the 300-gallon water tank; the 1.5-gpm (gallon per minute) low volume shower heads; the RV furnace in the floor (used to “take the chill off in cold weather,” said Woods); the stacking energy-efficient washer and gas dryer; the six shower stalls (four center stalls are 32 inches wide and the two end stalls are 36 inches wide); and insulation to keep the trailer cooler in the summer.

“How beautiful it has turned out,” Woodcock said to the gathering inside St. Paul’s UMC during a history of the trailer and recognition of donors’ session.

“This is a shining example of what passion and leading in (can do). … Everyone said it was something that is needed and something we can do.

“There was just an immense amount of work that went into it,” said Woodcock, “but Greg will tell you there aren’t many shower trailers like this around, if any.”

The responsibility going forward for maintaining the trailer falls to three. Haylor, Freyer & Coon Inc., an insurance agency in Syracuse, is donating liability coverage when the trailer is not hooked up to a tractor. The maintenance of the structure, registration, insurance and transportation of the trailer for the next five years is being covered by CT Express. The NEJ VIM will maintain the internal components of the trailer.

There is still outstanding financial need for the trailer, including funds needed by the NEJ VIM for future maintenance.

Following the Roll-Out Event, the trailer is headed to Earlville for a Walk-A-Thon sponsored by the Earlville UMC on Sunday, June 10. Registration begins at 1:15 p.m.; the walk steps off at 2 p.m.

The trailer then goes to Middleburgh for its first action. Between June 10-18, the final evaluation and tuning of the system will be performed; VIM teams will go to Middleburgh on June 18 for continuing work from the flooding of 2011, using the shower trailer for its inaugural run.

“Thank you,” Forrester told the St. Paul’s UMC gathering, “for bringing this shower trailer into the fleet of things we have needed.”

See more photos on the Conference's Facebook page.

*Christian Vischi is the communications associate for the Upper New York Annual Conference.