A little over two weeks ago, Limestone County resident Tommy Sprague and two of his friends from Minnesota Ronnie Lasiuta and Gary Duren arrived in Charleston, South Carolina, to help folks clean up after an unwelcome visit from Hurricane Irma.

What the team found was that most of the damage was in the affluent historical district, where repairs and cleanup were well underway.

Undeterred, they heard damage in Fort Myers, Florida, was extensive and that a local, non-denominational church was in desperate need of volunteers to help with cleanup in nearby Leigh High Acres, a 25-square-mile area of low-income homes.

The crew arrived in Fort Myers on Sept. 26 to find Next Level Church was already up and running. The church owns a building that was swiftly converted into a collection and distribution center after Irma hit.

“When we got there, the distribution center was full of boxes stacked three and four high,” Sprague said. “They had donations that had come from all over the country.”

The Rev. Will Hutcherson, a pastor at the church and head of the distribution center, wasted no time putting Sprague and his team to work.

“They had a pretty good system already in place,” Sprague said. “The church had gotten hundreds of calls from people needing some form of help or the other.”

Hutcherson put Sprague and Duren in charge of two chainsaw crews comprised of volunteers from the church and community.

“In the morning, we would get work orders from the church and head out to help whoever needed help that day,” Sprague said. “Most of the damage was tree-related.”

The Category 3 hurricane that left many in Fort Myers without power for days had sent trees crashing into roofs and uprooted towering palm trees from the ground.

Caroline and Thad Comings had lived in their Fort Myers home 28 years when a giant tree limb blown amok by Hurricane Irma’s winds tore into their roof. About 75 percent of their home was covered in debris.

“Their house was by far the worse we encountered,” Sprague said of the 35 homes he and his team worked on during their two-week long trip. “We had to climb trees just to get high enough to cut down the limbs stuck on their roof and to get a tarp up there.”

Comings said that what Sprague and his team did for her and her husband, a disabled Vietnam vet, took her breath away.

“Without them, I guess we would have had to wait for the dry season to get our wits together and wait on FEMA,” Comings said.

Lasiuta couldn’t tolerate Florida’s scorching temperatures and humidity, so he was put in charge of food preparation. Every day, the church handed out hundreds of hot meals, drive-thru style, to people lined up 20 cars deep in front of the distribution center.

“We came home with a few cuts and bruises and 6,000 miles on my truck,” Sprague said, “and with the confidence that the Fort Myers community will recover, no doubt about it.”