Onsite is our commitment to breaking down the barriers and misconceptions that shroud the construction profession. Ohley aims to initiate open and honest conversations, from job insecurity to the transient nature of projects, physical strain and often-overlooked mental health struggles.

The hum of generators, the whirring of chainsaws and the squeal of air brakes on bucket trucks have filled the air over the last week here in Central Florida. As of the time of writing this, my power just came back on last night after being out for three days!

Hurricane Helene— while merely grazing the West Florida Coastline as a storm, wrought havoc on it with the storm surge it produced. Native Floridians that I spoke with during the cleanup efforts— people who had lived in the areas I was in, such as Madeira Beach, for all their lives— stated they had never seen anything like it. To a Midwesterner like me, Gulf Blvd looked like it had been hit by a blizzard, albeit a blizzard of sand, and this blizzard didn’ t come from above, but rather blew crossways carried by ocean waves rarely seen on the West Coast, laying waste to everything in its path.

And earlier this week, Milton made its presence known.

While the cleanup efforts from Helene were just beginning to take shape, the news— and then the reality— of the second storm broke. There was a general feeling of disbelief. Could this really be happening? Just days after historic devastation along the coastline occurs, another, perhaps even more serious, storm is on the way?

This can’ t be happening. Yet, indeed it was … and it did. People who had just begun to digest what had just happened, were forced to set it aside and prepare again.

News stories abound, my intention is not to simply add to the list, but rather to draw your attention to a group of people we all know well and their part in this gut-wrenching saga— construction folks. What I would like to affectionately call them here: the fixers.

But not only are they the fixers, they’ re also the preparers.

Before Helene ever hit, construction crews of all kinds were called on to prepare, building flood walls at hospitals, boarding up windows and fortifying structures, filling sandbags by the truckload, making emergency repairs on roadways temporarily foregoing construction efforts and opening them up for evacuation, transporting untold amounts of construc-

October 18, 2024 15