Volunteer Lani Nyderek cuts a board while her husband, Joe Nyderek, serves as a brace. The couple spent the morning last Friday preparing the new Habitat for Humanity / Weyerhaeuser home for a dedication ceremony that afternoon. The new home will welcome its residents, an Ethiopian family, to Federal Way. <b>Photo by Seth Bynum</b>
26 years ago, Weyerhaeuser employees and volunteers began planting, each by hand, 18 million tree seedlings in the rich mantle of ash spewed from Mount Saint Helens.
Those conifer seedlings stand today over 75 feet tall, thanks, ironically, to the weed-discouraging and water-retaining ash mulch.
This month, a new house in Federal Way built in part from blast zone lumber, will become the home to five.
Weyerhaeuser, the largest private landowner in the area around the volcano, sustained heavy losses during the explosion in May of 1980. The company quickly mobilized to replant its forestland in the blast zone and beyond.
Last year, to mark the 25th anniversary of the Mt. St. Helen's eruption, Weyerhaeuser announced that, in partnership with Habitat for Humanity, they would spend $1 million to build houses for 25 families in the U.S. and Canada, and that trees planted in the wake of the eruption would be used as lumber.
After the announcement, Weyerhaeuser employees from around the country signed up to volunteer for the program in droves and since May of 2005, built the planned 25 houses, plus an additional seven, all within budget and all including lumber from the blast zone.
Last Friday, a Federal Way family were handed the keys to the 32nd, and final, house built through "Project Habitat".
The family hailing from Ethiopia will move into the house in the Steel Lake neighborhood of Federal Way.
The mother, Mako, is a customer service representative at Goodwill, while her husband, Hassan, works as a bus driver for King County Metro. Their three children,19, 18 and 7, will attend local schools.
Habit for Humanity chose the families that would receive a free "Project Habitat" house, using such criteria as whether the family could assist the building process with sweat equity, their yearly income and if they planned to stay in the house for good.
In addition to the house in Federal Way, the initiative funded the building of three other houses in Washington State; in Hoquiam, Longview and Tacoma. The remaining 28 houses were built in 17 U.S. states, and three Canadian providences.
