Another Busy Day

Mrs. Oda's deck was finished today, but not before her baby almost fell off!

First on the work agenda today was 3 benches, delivered to Ikawa Elementary School on the way to Maeda Kouen to build a second deck for a resident there. Why two? This one had to be 5 cm narrower, to go through the door. The resident apparently thinks it will make a good bed, and when I suggested leaving the railings off, she insisted they would come in handy!
Beds are on the horizon. I did a single and a double deck today (and ended up with requests for 5 more), but the first cool days of fall have a lot of peole worried they will freeze if they sleep on the damp (mostly uninsulated) floors, so decks may take a back seat to beds for awhile. Even more worrisome was hearing a woman say there have been big sales of unvented kerosene heaters that don't need electricity. Everyone remembers the cold weeks with no power this spring, and the temporary housing units have electric heat pumps for both cooling and heating. But, if people try to heat these tiny, well sealed units with an unvented oil heater, they will die, plain and simple.
Tomorrow I am to build a bunk bed and a semi-single bed for a friend of a friend, to get them off the floor, which is molding in places. It is hard to find beds the right size in the stores. The temporary housing they live in has four tiny rooms. Neither the AC or the heat works outside the room the unit is in.
The first impression upon driving into the disaster area is that things are coming under control. To a large extent, that is true. The government, volunteer organizations, and the victims themselves have been working long and hard. But, the problem is too big to be solved so quickly. There are lots of gaps to plug.
It's not over yet.