You could just stand there and cry

Like many here in the western Philadelphia suburbs, where downed trees and power outages were the most common vestiges of Hurricane Sandy, Lori Jennings watched the devastation unfold farther east, on the Jersey shore and in New York, on news reports.

For her, though, those images have not faded with the months since the passage of the superstorm. They were refreshed, and made only more vivid and personal, when she and about two dozen other volunteers traveled to three New Jersey communities earlier this month to help with what still seems an almost unimaginably difficult recovery.

Jennings, an administrative assistant in the Lower Merion Township Manager’s Office, and her husband, Ronnie, were part of a group from GraceCrossing Community Church in their home town of Phoenixville that spent Jan. 7-9 ripping out water-damaged walls and floors and helping residents move belongings from houses left uninhabitable by the storm, in towns still virtually empty three months later.

Before making the trip, Jennings, a township employee since 2005, said what she knew about conditions in the hard-hit communities of Ortley Beach, Point Pleasant and Brick Township was “what we saw on television.” “Seeing it in person – you could just stand there and cry,” she said.

Hers was actually the second group from the church to work on the recovery. A member of the American Baptist Churches of Pennsylvania and Delaware (ABCOPAD), GraceCrossing worked through that organization with the charity Samaritan’s Purse, which has been engaged in disaster relief efforts around the world. A non-denominational evangelical Christian organization, Samaritan’s Purse coordinates efforts of volunteer teams, in this case identifying homeowners in need and providing site management and tools for the job, Jennings said.

Among her group, some of the volunteers were retired and some, like Jennings and her husband, a technician with Comcast, used vacation time to help out. “I had no idea what they were going to have us do,” she said. “Every day was different.”

Jennings said the group arrived on the Sunday night. Most were housed at the vacant parsonage of a church in Brick Township, while some, including the Jenningses, stayed at the home of their pastor, the Rev. Brent Miller’s, parents. “They were out of power for 10 days, but didn’t have any water damage,” she said, though “a mile down the road” there had been flooding.

Technology consultancy and precision manufacturing specialist Prodrive (Banbury, Oxfordshire, U.K.) reported on Jan. 25 that it has won a major contract to supply components for first-class cabin interiors. The order is Prodrive’s biggest aerospace contract to date, strengthening what it says is its position as one of the premier suppliers of composites to sectors where precision and finish are critical.

“This is a significant win for the company and confirms the aerospace sector’s growing interest in extending the use of high-quality composites in the interior,” says Ian Handscombe, Prodrive’s composites business manager. “The contract is an interesting transfer of the expertise that has made us one of the leaders in precision composite engineering for the automotive industry and demonstrates the opportunities that are opening for companies with exceptional technical capability combined with the high efficiency levels that allow competitive pricing.”

Prodrive’s integrated service includes design and development of the initial tooling through to the fabrication and finishing of each piece using state-of-the-art CNC machines. The company also has the capability to provide design support, using the same engineering team that works with a wide range of customers from Formula 1 to biomedical.

“The key requirement for this program is a very high quality finish. Components that are visible to passengers have a zero-defect allowance,” says Handscombe. “We have strong, long-term relationships with many of Europe’s leading manufacturers of luxury and high-performance cars, which I believe gave our new aerospace customer confidence in our ability to deliver to their demanding standards.”