ST JAMES CITY, Fla. — Work continues to rebuild Pine Island after hurricanes Helene, Milton, and Ian, but with less “man power.”
"They can help and do a lot of the so on, so called grunt work,” said Eric Wightman, a volunteer for the Greater Pine Island Alliance (GPIA).
See what a volunteer with AmeriCorps tells Fox 4's Bella Line about the funding cuts:
Wightman told Fox 4’s Bella Line over the past couple of months, a group of AmeriCorps volunteers from around the country were on Pine Island to help rebuild, until DOGE cut their funding.
"Tuesday early, we're having a dinner by Tuesday afternoon they were being sent home. Wednesday, they were gone,” Wightman said.
The Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), which has been working to get rid of government waste, completely cut AmeriCorps funding.
According to the Associated Press, AmeriCorps volunteers have served eight million service hours since 1999, much of that service was for natural disaster recovery.
A week prior to the cuts, Bella Line was on Pine Island with an AmeriCorps group.
On Thursday, she spoke with two volunteers, who wanted to remain anonymous, had to head back to Iowa.
"It almost felt like a rug was pulled from under us,” said a volunteer.
They say they were shocked at how quickly their work was stopped.
"We decided to put our lives on hold for 11 months to strengthen American communities,” the volunteer said.
One volunteer told Line they might have to go to a shelter until they figure out what to do next.
"As much as we're thinking about where we're going to go and what we're going to do, it was really disheartening to not be able to finish that,” said a volunteer.
Now, projects they were in the middle of working on are left for GPIA volunteers to pick up.
"It's kind of put us in that quandary of how to finish these jobs so that these survivors can get back to normal living,” said Wightman.
One of the volunteers sent Bella Line the petition AmeriCorps volunteers have started to get their funding back.
