VALPARAISO | Getting in and out of their home now will be a lot easier for Don Pollack and his niece Judy Pollack Tincher thanks to ramps installed by volunteers Saturday.

Fifteen volunteers, mostly Valparaiso firefighters along with a couple of carpenters, worked in cold, wet conditions to install almost 40 feet of ramps from the deck at the rear of their home on Albert Street. The project also involved a little remodeling of the deck to open a space in the railing for the ramps.

"It's like a godsend for us," Tincher said. "It means I can get in and out of the house, and, if something happens, I won't be stuck in here."

Tincher said her uncle is a Navy veteran and longtime Valparaiso teacher who is undergoing experimental chemotherapy for cancer in Logansport. He rarely gets home and has to be almost carried up the stairs. Tincher has neuropathy, a disease that causes the nerves in the legs to slowly die. It has reached her knees, and she said once it starts it can't be stopped.

"I've been all over to get a cure, but they are not able to do anything," she said.

The ramp project was part of Ramp It Up, Porter County, a collaboration by Rebuilding Together, Heroes at Home, Porter County Aging & Community Services and American Ramp Systems. The group installed ramps on a total of nine homes Saturday to aid low-income residents and veterans in Portage, Valparaiso and Hebron.

Representatives of American Ramp Systems, which is owned locally by Bill and Kathy Woods, helped with the installation of the steel ramps. The modular units can be assembled more easily than the standard wooden ones and, when they are no longer needed at the home, can be disassembled and moved to another location.

The Rev. John Albers, of Rebuilding Together, said several of the wooden ramps the group has installed over the past couple of years have been torn down by new homeowners while a metal ramp was removed and taken to another location.

For Pollack and Tincher, the ramp extended 21 feet parallel to the rear of the house and 17 feet along the side before reaching the ground. Tincher said her uncle was going to try to come home Saturday.

"He had a (chemo) treatment Friday and usually he can't do much the next day, but he was so excited about the ramps that he wanted to come. I'm so excited myself."

The volunteers also were able to stabilize a section of the deck railing that was giving way. Albers said the wet weather discouraged a few people from trying the new ramps, but a 9-year-old with muscular dystrophy was able to use the one built for him right away.

A new donation from the Porter County Community Foundation, which helped fund Saturday's effort, will allow Rebuilding Together to install a few more ramps. Albers said he hopes to do that by Thanksgiving.

"One of the best things is now we have a couple dozen more folks that can help with the next ones," he said.