West Seneca, N.Y. (WBEN) - In the several days after the lake effect snow machine stopped churning over Western New York, cleanup efforts continued throughout the region, especially in places like West Seneca, where more than 80 inches of snow fell in less than a week's time.
Among those helping local residents with cleanup efforts was Eight Days of Hope, the Christian nonprofit organization that helps serve communities in need after natural and human disasters. One of their Satellite locations happens to be right here in Buffalo.
While most of the volunteers helping to clear out snow-covered driveways or roofs are from Western New York, sometimes the call for help extends elsewhere throughout the country. This includes Dustin Sullivan, who serves as Eight Days of Hope's Rapid Response Director out of their Tupelo, Mississippi headquarters.
"This is a tremendous amount of snow. I've never seen anything like this in my life," said Sullivan in an interview with WBEN. "I think this part of West Seneca, they received something like seven feet of snow within a week, which just crazy for me being down South to even comprehend. But we're just here trying to serve as many homeowners so we can for the few days that we're here by taking snow and ice off with their roofs and, of course, clearing their driveways for them."
Sullivan and a number of others arrived in Buffalo a few days back in an effort to help as many Western New Yorkers that needed some extra assistance to clean up from some heavy amounts of lake effect snow. His time in Western New York helping with cleanup efforts wrapped up on Tuesday.
"We like to help as many people as we can," Sullivan said. "We've literally had hundreds of people ask for assistance, but with our 30 volunteers that we've had, we have served about 80 homes the past few days.
"It's just great seeing a group of volunteers come and do this for free. They're here for no other purpose but to help their neighbor. A lot of the people that are serving with us this week are from here in Buffalo, so it's really incredible seeing folks come out and just helping."
And the range of people Sullivan and Eight Days of Hope have helped over the last few days has been varying.
"We like when we can help the single moms, the widows or even the elderly couple that may have physical disabilities, or maybe they don't get around as well as they used to. We love to help people that need help. Just anybody."
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Sullivan says the cleanup response has been quite extensive over the last few days. Efforts start bright and early in the morning, and volunteer crews will get to as many houses as possible before the sun goes down.
"First thing we do is we meet in the mornings around 7:30," Sullivan detailed. "We start out early, we have breakfast, we have a devotion. We'll get our schedules for the day, finding out which homes we're going to serve, what neighborhoods we're going to serve, and then we'll split up into about three or four different teams or crews, and then we'll go out. We'll take skid steers, roof rakes, and we'll finish up around 4 o'clock in the afternoon. But normally we eat our lunch out at the person's house, a bag lunch, we'll take that with us. Then by the time we get in bed, we're ready to go to sleep and get some rest."
While Sullivan has made a few other stops through Western New York in the past, he says the one thing he's taken away from this time spent in the region is the people and being able to serve the gracious community any way he can.
"A few days ago, we were able to serve a couple, [they're] grandparents, and their grandson was with them, he was probably eight-, nine-, 10-years-old. He was watching our volunteers, watching what we were doing and he watched really closely. We could tell he was really observant, and he went to one of our volunteers and he told them, 'Wow, when I grew up, I want to be a volunteer with Eight Days of Hope.' It's really incredible to watch this young man, this young boy be inspired and being encouraged by what we're doing," Sullivan reminisced. "So hopefully, one day when he gets older, he'll encourage and inspire other volunteers to come together to help their neighbors. So I hope we're doing good around here."
You can learn more about Eight Days of Hope by visiting their website:
