Garrett Neese/Daily Mining Gazette The entrance to the JCPenney building at the Copper Country Mall, where the Volunteer Resource Center is currently located. The center is reducing staffing to Saturdays only, due to shortages.

PORTAGE TOWNSHIP — Owing to staffing shortages, the Volunteer Resource Center, formed in response to the June 17 flood, has cut back to Saturdays only.

The center, located in the back of the former JCPenney building at the Copper Country Mall, is open from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturdays.

The Great Lakes Conservation Corps, which had provided staffing for the past couple of weeks, pulled out on Friday due to a need to reallocate resources, said Jon Stone, supervisor of the Volunteer Research Center. They had originally been anticipated to pull out at the end of this week.

“We’re still sending people out, but the workload now as we wait for the rebuilding phase to begin is really slowing down, so we are going to transition from a daily operation to a Saturday operation,” Stone said.

There’s still work to be done in the community, although much of it will require heavy equipment that isn’t available, Stone said. Of the 117 job tickets that were submitted to the volunteer center, it could only pull out 15 to work today.

People who need assistance are still urged to contact Dial Help at 233-6621 so it can log work orders throughout the week. The Volunteer Resource Center will then meet on Friday night to look through the work orders and build work tickets on Saturday.

Volunteers for the Saturday work are still sorely needed, Stone said. As of about 3 p.m. Saturday, it had been quiet.

“Today has been very quiet. It’s hot, I know, but we still really need volunteers on Saturdays, especially now that that’s the only day we’re going to be working. We have to have volunteers to be able to meet the needs on Saturdays.”

The volunteer center has also suspended debris removal work while the state and county work out who will foot the bill for debris already removed from the station, Stone said.

Aside from dehumidifiers, donations will be rerouted to non-profits and food pantries that traditionally provide that kind of support.

The waiting list for dehumidifiers is about 30 people, Stone said. There had been a slowdown until Thursday’s heavy rains. Now some basements are showing cracks that hadn’t appeared after the first flood, sending water in.

“It’s so humid, fans aren’t drying it out,” he said. “we need another 50 to 100 dehumidifiers easy, and we can get rid of them. it’s a critical need.”

If dehumidifiers are lined up during the week, Stone said, the people on the waiting list will be contacted and will be able to pick them up on Saturday.

As much as the people at the center want to provide help, there are staffing constraints as people return to their full-time jobs, Stone said.

“We’ve come through the spring section, which was ‘Make sure everyone was physically OK,’ and now we’re in the long-term rebuilding/recovery phase,” he said. “We are developing a pattern for that, a work pattern that works for volunteers, but also works for those in need.”