RAINELLE, W.Va. — Chris Schroeder of the Appalachia Service Project probably couldn’t have predicted he’d spend the better part of the last year in the Greenbrier County town of Rainelle.
Nor could he have predicted how it might impact him.
“I feel like it’s had more of an impact on my staff and I — us as an organization — than we realized,” Schroeder said.
Appalachia Service Project, based in Johnsonville, Tennessee, has dedicated a large chunk of their organization to the ‘Rebuild Rainelle’ project. For Schroeder, who is the group’s flood recovery coordinator, it’s a very different experience compared to his previous work with ASP.
“ASP was already here, but reassessed our presence here of what we might be able to do for this community — what we felt we should do for this community,” he said.
In fact, Rainelle is essentially the first foray by ASP into disaster recovery.
“It’s a town that’s hard to walk away from,” Schroeder said. “And it’s a town built to carry on — is the official motto. I didn’t know Rainelle before the flood, but I think that motto — that spirit — is just as alive now as it ever was.”
Despite surpassing a year of work to help the town recover from historic flooding last June, Schroeder still marvels at the first few days of post-flood Rainelle.
“It was still incredible,” he said. “Folks from Subway going two miles an hour down Main Street just handing sandwiches to people — bottles of water everywhere. Folks just pouring out of the woodwork, having no experience in building or repairing or anything, but just wanting to help and wanting to know how they can get involved and wanting to know how they can do something.”
Schroeder, originally from the Mt. Morris, PA area just north of the Monongalia County border, said it’s important to remember that he and the large ASP volunteer force have one major core mission in Rainelle.
“I’ve some semblance of the loss felt by this community, but in other ways I and ASP are here to support these people and to rebuild and to help move forward and to help Rainelle carry on,” he said.
It’s a mission that has already begun to take shape — with ten new homes built before last Thanksgiving. ASP’s eventual goal is to build 50 new homes, and Schroeder said that means ASP can’t go anywhere until the job is finished.
“I’m not ready to go just yet,” he said. “The job is not done yet. We’re a year out, but we still have a long way to go.”