“In 2005 my life was turned upside down by Hurricane Katrina,” said Megan Finn ’98.

Megan had been living and working in New Orleans since she graduated from Tulane University. When the storm hit the city, she was pregnant with her daughter Evelyn and visiting her family in Connecticut with her partner. The hurricane’s devastation essentially uprooted their life in Louisiana.

“The kindness of my family, friends, and people I didn’t even know saved my little family,” Megan recalled, and ultimately resulted in her finding a new home and a new career — as well as future opportunities to pay it forward by helping others who lives have been challenged by natural disasters.

“We moved to New York City, where I knew some people who were getting jobs in the trades,” she explained. “A pre-apprenticeship program called Non-Traditional Employment for Women (NEW) opened the door for an opportunity in the building trades. In 2007 I joined the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local Union #3 apprenticeship program.”

Since then, Megan has been working as an electrician on construction projects in New York City, though the pandemic’s impact on the industry has now resulted in her being laid off in September for the first time in her career.

Despite that setback, however, Megan still volunteered in early October for her fourth trip to a region that had been hit by a tropical storm, this time flying to Louisiana with a team of volunteers to help with recovery work after Hurricane Delta brought powerful winds and more than a foot of rain to communities already ravaged by Hurricane Laura a few weeks before.

Megan was part of a team organized by Heart 9/11 (Healing Emergency Aid Response Team 9/11), an organization made up of first responders — New York City firefighters and police officers, as well as Port Authority police officers — along with members of the New York City building trades who bonded in the aftermath of September 11, 2001, to honor the sacrifices of colleagues and family members lost in the World Trade Center attacks.

“Basically,” Megan explained, “the organization sends volunteers with specific skills as first responders and building trades to do recovery and rebuilding projects in disaster zones. They also set up pre-apprenticeship training for people in some of the affected areas, such as Puerto Rico and the Bahamas.”

From October 11-13, Megan was part of two Rapid Response Teams that included half a dozen volunteers from New York and North Carolina that Heart 9/11 sent to the Lake Charles area of Louisiana to assist the International Association of Firefighters and local first responders with emergency operations, debris clearing, and damage mitigation and assessments.

While there, Megan said, “we worked closely with the firefighters in Crowley and Lake Charles. Western Louisiana has been battered by Hurricane Delta and was expecting more storms. Our mission was to tarp damaged roofs to protect the homes from future storms.”

Two North Carolina firefighters on her team had driven a truck trailer of tools and supplies to the region so that future deployments would be ready to get to work, Megan explained. “The truck is well supplied with tarps, nails, hammers, saws, flashlights, first-aid kits, and thankfully a few spare tires — after a long day’s work, we got a flat driving home on the I-10.”

Whenever she has gone on a Heart 9/11 trip, Megan noted, “you have to go with the attitude that the situation is fluid, so you have to be flexible. You may not be able to stay where you thought you were going to stay, because the situation on the ground changes. And you go along with the local leadership. If they want something done a certain way, you go with it.”

Reflecting on her experiences so far, Megan said, “Heart 9/11 has been a really meaningful organization to me these past few years. I have met really great people on these trips, both the volunteers and the people in the communities. I’ve seen the beauty, courage, and generosity of people at their most vulnerable,” people who have shown resilience, support for one another, and deep gratitude to volunteers like Megan.

Megan has also seen the results of what she describes as “the utter cruelty of government inaction. Climate change is here, and no amount of volunteer efforts will reverse the damage on this scale. We need to face it as an existential threat and develop the skills for people to recover and rebuild.”

In September 2017, Megan said, “I started going on Heart 9/11 deployments in the wake of Hurricane Maria,” which devastated Dominica, St. Croix, and Puerto Rico. “The federal response to the devastation in Puerto Rico was shameful. There was no movement except to try to exploit the crisis with sweetheart contracts.”

Meanwhile, Megan explained, “the New York building trade unions worked with Heart 9/11 to send teams of skilled tradespeople — plumbers, carpenters, electricians, laborers, metal trades — in week-long deployments. Teams were sent to San Juan and Orocovis.”

“My team from IBEW LU#3 and other union building trades and SUNY students went to the beautiful Orocovis hills,” Megan recalled. “People lacked passable streets and electricity for months. Our job was to clear debris, repair walls, replace roofs. While I didn’t have roof-building skills at the time, working closely with carpenters and local builders, Heart 9/11 could rely on our familiarity with tools and work conditions and our understanding of safety to get the job done.”

“We worked hard all day,” Megan said, “and then we ate at a local restaurant in the night. Often the families would bring us a delicious homemade meal. All the trades people slept in a home donated for our use. It was like being in college again and a lot of fun. I made great friends with the other tradespeople and it’s exciting to still see them on the job in the city.”

“I went again to Orocovis in the summer of 2019 with another building trades team,” Megan added. “My team wired a home from service to switches in less than a week. It was nice to see the progress the community had made in a year and to see some familiar faces. But there was still so much work to do.”

Megan is especially excited by a program that Heart 9/11 established in 2019, a pre-apprenticeship training for local residents in devastated areas to develop their building skills and to continue rebuilding.

“That is the part I am most proud of,” she said, “because while we come for a week and do as much as we can, it’s the people who live there that must control the destiny of their community.”

In November 2019, Megan went with another IBEW LU 3 team to a tiny island in Green Turtle Key in the Bahamas, after it had been ravaged by Hurricane Dorian.

“I’d never seen such destruction,” Megan said. “It was humbling to hear how the little island came together with community kitchens, volunteers, educating the children, and countless other ways.”

“On this tiny island,” Megan recalled, “you basically could see us on the roofs from almost anywhere. In the evening at the local watering hole — it’s amazing how those seem to find a way to be open,” she said with a laugh — “the locals and other contracted builders called me Red. I had short, bright red hair at the time, and apparently it was something to see a lady working on a roof. We also got to sneak in a few dips in the Bahamas’ beautiful water.”

Looking back at her years as an electrician, Megan acknowledges that her career choice might be seen an unusual one for a Westover graduate.

“In high school,” she said, “I really wasn’t sure what I wanted to do as I got older. Even though my father worked in the trades when I was younger, and I was the kid taking things apart — fixing my bicycle, building forts — no one ever said, ‘Hey the trades might be for you.’”

But since pursuing that field after Hurricane Katrina upended her life, Megan has had no regrets.

“I love being an electrician,” she said. “I love seeing the ‘bones and guts’ of New York City. By that I mean the buildings before all the offices and stores are moved in — what’s in the walls and ceilings and floors before there are ceiling, walls, and floors. I love turning on the beautiful lighting systems after all the dirt, concrete, and debris has been cleared.”

“Often,” Megan said, “I am the only woman on the job — pretty different from Westover,” she added with a laugh. “Things got easier when I began believing in my skills and when I knew that I was way more funny than the boys. I roll my eyes when they say things like ‘Good for a girl.’ I’m like, ‘Dude, I run circles around you guys.’ You have to be better to get any respect.”

And that is why, Megan noted, “I’m so glad that there are programs like Non-Traditional Employment for Women. My friend Judaline Cassidy, a union plumber I met on the Orocovis project, runs a camp for girls called Tools and Tiaras. Based on the premise that jobs don’t have a gender, she familiarizes girls with the different trades, often bringing in her sister tradeswomen to teach a class. She has the girls work on projects. It would be amazing if Westover teamed up with this program.”

Having women role models in the traditionally male fields is important to Megan. “You have to see it to be it,” she said. “That’s also why I like hopping up on the roofs with my trade sisters, hammers in hand” on Heart 9/11 disaster recovery trips.

“Maybe that gives a young woman wondering what do with her life in the wake of disaster some hope and possibility.”