After nearly 11 hours of driving, the group of 29 Ball State students finally arrived at their destination in Tuscaloosa, Ala. and many couldn't believe what they saw.
"I wasn't expecting it to be nearly as bad as it was," Bryce Rector, sophomore math education major, said. "Some neighborhoods were gone. Maybe half a driveway was left."
Debris still took over the area nearly a year after a tornado swept through Tuscaloosa on April 27, 2011.
"It literally looked like a nuclear bomb went off," Rector said. "You have no idea how bad it is, the path of a tornado, until you see it."
Rector and the group of students, which consisted of four graduate student advisers, volunteered during their Spring Break to repair some of the homes and clean up the area.
The group worked through the United Saints Recovery Project, which organizes relief efforts in both New Orleans and Tuscaloosa. Each student paid only $350 for the whole week. Through this fee, the United Saints provided their housing, gas costs and food, which the students cooked each night in rotating shifts.
March 4 through Friday, the students volunteered from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. The jobs included repair work, such as painting, roofing, putting up siding and relaying flooring as well as outdoor clean up such as mowing and picking up yards.
"There were tons of spiders and rats in the debris," Rector said. "I was scared a snake was going to come out."
At one point during the clean up, a rat ran across his foot, he said.
But even with the labor, many of the volunteers said the experience was worth it.
"It was a trip where you get an opportunity to make an impact on someone else's life," Rector said. "It was a life changing experience."
While working, the students got to the meet the people who owned the houses they were fixing up. One of the home owners was a woman in her 50s from Hong Kong. After the tornadoes hit, she and her daughter were left with severe damage to their home, which made the home more accessible to burglars. After eight break-ins, she decided to live out of her car for safety rather than necessity.
In addition to the heart-breaking storm damage, the woman received an ultimatum from the state concerning the debris cluttering her front yard. Senior international business major and volunteer Brooke Zollinger said the city threatened to take possession of the home if the debris failed to be cleaned up.
"We worked really hard to clean up everything so she could keep her house," Zollinger said. "She hadn't even been in her house since the storm because it was too painful for her."
Despite the painful circumstances, the victims remained positive and hospitable to the students. One woman, Lois Sadler, showed her appreciation by making the students homemade pound cake and sweet potato pie.
"She was a super upbeat person, always happy and had a positive outlook, even though her house was really damaged," Rector said.
Zollinger said service work is humbling.
"Especially this kind of experience where these people lost basically everything in two minutes," Zollinger said. "Seeing how positive they are about it is eye-opening and puts everything perspective."
Not only were the victims grateful for the volunteer service - the whole city of Tuscaloosa showed their appreciation.
Efosa Ogbomo, one of the four graduate assistants on the trip, said hearing the appreciation from city members was the best part of the week.
"So many people expressed their thanks to us for spending our Spring Break helping others," he said.
Ogbomo, who also participated in the Alternative Fall Break trip to Lousiville, Ky., last semester, said in addition to gaining the satisfaction of helping others, building relationships with other students was also a highlight of the week.
"You get to meet a group of people that maybe you would not hang out with on campus and build those relationships," he said. "We get caught up a lot in doing things for ourselves, so it's nice to do things for others with people your age."
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