Hi All,
It has been 25 days since Hurricane Katrina. I figured I’d send another update on our work here along the Gulf Coast before Rita makes landfall and creates a whole new set of problems for the network.
The food bank passed the 3 million pound mark in distribution earlier this week and has an additional 1 million pounds of food inbound from the efforts of the network staff. In addition to the 132 donated loads from the network, (over 100 have already arrived), we’ve had 10 USDA disaster loads, 6 Oprah donated loads, and approximately 10 direct loads from other donors. 5 of the original 6 loaned staff members will have departed by tomorrow and we have received new staff from Oregon, San Jose, Sacramento and Colorado which is maintaining our strength. To all who have loaned staff members, thanks! They’ve each pitched in and done terrific work, sometimes nothing like what they came to do, in helping us distribute over 5 times our usual rate. We have also received 8 FEMA funded temporary employees who are being trained on various warehousing duties to help us in the long haul recovery effort.
For the Mississippi and Alabama Gulf Coast the relief effort is largely complete and we are now in the recovery effort. That means many of the hot feeding sites are standing down, people are camped on their property or in some form of temporary shelter. The next few months will continue to require expanded food distribution because those living close to the edge financially are now waiting for financial assistance, water and power still needs to be fully restored and then commercial businesses need to restock. As a result, most of the 140 different organizations we’ve distributed to will be shifting from constant distribution to periodic mass distributions, probably on weekends, as those people in the disaster area restart jobs or assist with clean-up during the week.
Damage estimates become more and more refined every day. It appears that this storm has affected our Mississippi/west Alabama service area at approximately 3 times the level that Hurricane Ivan impacted our Florida/east Alabama service area last year. That translates to somewhere in the range of 80,000 people significantly impacted out of the coastal Mississippi population of roughly 300,000. Where New Orleans is largely a displaced persons relief effort due to flooding, our service area has much of the population in place but in vastly substandard living conditions. I can report that our two person Gulfport SDO, Twelve Baskets, amazingly escaped significant damage in spite of the buildings on either side being destroyed. The Branch manager, Jennifer Knue is back at work getting the building cleaned and waiting on the return of water and power-still weeks away. Unfortunately her assistant, Brenda Williams suffered a total loss of her home and has had to move in with one of her children’s family, an all too common situation.
I’ll close this update by saying that support from Mike and Al’s staffs has been outstanding in what has to be the biggest challenge the network has ever faced. Two examples of their effort; to get rental Reefer trucks on site to increase our direct distribution, the Chicago staff had to go all the way to Iowa before they could find available trucks. And, when I identify a particular need, such as a request for a supply of Pedialyte in case intestinal problems should develop among returnees, the staff finds the item and gets it to us. There is no doubt that the Chicago staff is clearly focused on doing their best to get us through this disaster. Doug O’Brien’s staff is helping cut, no eliminate, red tape in getting USDA food to each of us to assist with emergency distribution.
This morning the local NBC affiliate featured the food bank with a lead in that essentially said, “there is one area organization that has worked effectively since Katrina struck” and closed with a comment that the one thing not found anywhere at the Food Bank was “Red Tape.” We got the credit, but it is the entire network that can take pride in the statement.
We’ve posted some pictures on our web site www.bayareafoodbank.org for those interested.
Dave Reaney
Executive Director
Bay Area Food Bank
Theodore (Mobile) Alabama
Thursday, September 22, 2005
Tuesday, September 13, 2005
Katrina Disaster update
Hi all,
Knowing everyone is starved for information I figured I’d send something out today to let you know what terrific support we’ve been receiving and give you our perspective as the food bank on the eastern edge of Katrina- nicked by the storm but not in the main area of destruction.
In the first 48 hours after the Hurricane the Bay Area Food Bank struggled to keep the main facility viable. Our main warehouse received winds exceeding 90 MPH, suffered $75,000 to $100,000 in damage and lost commercial power. A part on our emergency generator worked loose through the night, probably due to the winds, which resulted in our 400 gallon diesel tank blowing out diesel and running dry in 12 hours instead of the usual 40 hours. While EMA/national Guard took a request for emergency fuel, the staff siphoned gas from the diesel trucks to keep the generator functioning about 50% of the time. It was 30 hours before the National Guard diesel arrived. Our SDO located in Gulfport Mississippi was in the heart of the Mississippi destruction. Although the structure survived, it will not be operational for some time due to location, lack of power and the need to clean out significant damaged product. Our Pace, Florida branch suffered minor damage for the third time, (Ivan and Dennis) but had power restored within 24 hours.
In the first several days 90% of communication with Chicago was via personal cell phone due to line outages, we were lucky to have even that. 50% of the Theodore staff suffered damage to their homes and all but one lost power for times ranging from three to seven days. Yet, all were at work for the first four days after the Hurricane before we could start letting individuals take a day to clean-up their house and find gas. Today all have power, some have tarps on their roofs awaiting repair and FEMA has started picking up the mounds of debris along every curb in town.
Our 21 county service area includes the eight southern-most counties in Mississippi, all of Coastal Alabama and the four western Counties in the Florida Panhandle (struck by Hurricane Dennis in July and Ivan last September). Calls to our 80 plus Mississippi agencies in the first week after the Hurricane yielded no response. Even today we have had direct contact with only 3 agencies. As a result we distribute based on word of mouth from Sheriff Departments, EMA centers, Red Cross and any other source of information we can find.
In the first ten days since the Hurricane, the Bay Area Food Bank has distributed approximately 1.5 million pounds of food in Mississippi and southern Alabama. Our branch facility in the Pensacola Florida area has started supporting four church shelters set up to feed and house displaced persons, mostly from Mississippi.
Checking this morning, the Chicago office has over 50 loads on our arrived or inbound list totaling over 2 million pounds of food and disaster relief products. The USDA has provided 6 emergency loads, most arriving today, while we’ve received two diverted Red Cross loads (UHT Milk and Frozen Chicken). We were also allocated 6 or 7 loads from the Oprah donation. I can not easily count the loads
We currently have 6 Food Bank staff and two trucks assisting us. Ft Myers has sent a Reefer and warehouse worker (Andrew). Waterloo, Iowa has sent a Driver, Jeff (handling the Fort Myers truck). Kansas City has sent a truck and driver, Rusty. Columbia Georgia has sent a Driver, David. New York City has sent a volunteer coordinator, Ray. And, Concord, CA has sent an operation’s Manager, Steve.
Daysprings Baptist church, located about six miles from the warehouse, has hundreds of volunteers sorting food and making food boxes with loaned equipment. They are making up over 1,000 boxes per day and load them into smaller truck/trailer loads going to rural communities or neighborhoods- 60,000 pounds yesterday alone. Trucks are diverted to them for box production while the warehouse handles pallet level distribution with our trucks and a number of large trucks in the area from a wide assortment of disaster relief organizations and churches.
Knowing that our Mississippi and Alabama service area is only part of the area impacted area should give you and indication of the scope of this operation when you add the other partners involved in this effort. I receive calls from Mike Halligan, Al Brislain, Dan LaBonte, as well as Mark, Stephanie or Mitzi daily to see if there is anything additional we need and check on how things are going. Ertharin contacts me periodic for a “sanity check” as well. We also received a much appreciated immediate $25,000 grant to help with the immediate upsurge in activity/costs we’ve experienced and will experience in the coming weeks.
The national staff is also working to determine the long range needs we’ll have as the 1st phase of relief dies down and we move into supporting agencies trying to restart after their repairs are complete and handle vastly increased numbers of requests for support. To put this in perspective, only about 60% of our west Florida agencies have returned to helping the community since Hurricane Ivan struck 12 months ago next week. At the same time, distribution in west Florida since last September has increased 50% to meet the needs. I expect a similar situation over the next year with our Mississippi service area and with need in our Alabama and Florida service area related to displaced persons.
Thanks to all for the support and offers of support. It is truly appreciated. You can track our daily progress and find some pictures on our web site www.bayareafoodbank.org
Our media contacts working to keep people informed are Shearie Archer sarcher@secondharvest.org and Anita Havel ahavel@secondharvest.org
Knowing everyone is starved for information I figured I’d send something out today to let you know what terrific support we’ve been receiving and give you our perspective as the food bank on the eastern edge of Katrina- nicked by the storm but not in the main area of destruction.
In the first 48 hours after the Hurricane the Bay Area Food Bank struggled to keep the main facility viable. Our main warehouse received winds exceeding 90 MPH, suffered $75,000 to $100,000 in damage and lost commercial power. A part on our emergency generator worked loose through the night, probably due to the winds, which resulted in our 400 gallon diesel tank blowing out diesel and running dry in 12 hours instead of the usual 40 hours. While EMA/national Guard took a request for emergency fuel, the staff siphoned gas from the diesel trucks to keep the generator functioning about 50% of the time. It was 30 hours before the National Guard diesel arrived. Our SDO located in Gulfport Mississippi was in the heart of the Mississippi destruction. Although the structure survived, it will not be operational for some time due to location, lack of power and the need to clean out significant damaged product. Our Pace, Florida branch suffered minor damage for the third time, (Ivan and Dennis) but had power restored within 24 hours.
In the first several days 90% of communication with Chicago was via personal cell phone due to line outages, we were lucky to have even that. 50% of the Theodore staff suffered damage to their homes and all but one lost power for times ranging from three to seven days. Yet, all were at work for the first four days after the Hurricane before we could start letting individuals take a day to clean-up their house and find gas. Today all have power, some have tarps on their roofs awaiting repair and FEMA has started picking up the mounds of debris along every curb in town.
Our 21 county service area includes the eight southern-most counties in Mississippi, all of Coastal Alabama and the four western Counties in the Florida Panhandle (struck by Hurricane Dennis in July and Ivan last September). Calls to our 80 plus Mississippi agencies in the first week after the Hurricane yielded no response. Even today we have had direct contact with only 3 agencies. As a result we distribute based on word of mouth from Sheriff Departments, EMA centers, Red Cross and any other source of information we can find.
In the first ten days since the Hurricane, the Bay Area Food Bank has distributed approximately 1.5 million pounds of food in Mississippi and southern Alabama. Our branch facility in the Pensacola Florida area has started supporting four church shelters set up to feed and house displaced persons, mostly from Mississippi.
Checking this morning, the Chicago office has over 50 loads on our arrived or inbound list totaling over 2 million pounds of food and disaster relief products. The USDA has provided 6 emergency loads, most arriving today, while we’ve received two diverted Red Cross loads (UHT Milk and Frozen Chicken). We were also allocated 6 or 7 loads from the Oprah donation. I can not easily count the loads
We currently have 6 Food Bank staff and two trucks assisting us. Ft Myers has sent a Reefer and warehouse worker (Andrew). Waterloo, Iowa has sent a Driver, Jeff (handling the Fort Myers truck). Kansas City has sent a truck and driver, Rusty. Columbia Georgia has sent a Driver, David. New York City has sent a volunteer coordinator, Ray. And, Concord, CA has sent an operation’s Manager, Steve.
Daysprings Baptist church, located about six miles from the warehouse, has hundreds of volunteers sorting food and making food boxes with loaned equipment. They are making up over 1,000 boxes per day and load them into smaller truck/trailer loads going to rural communities or neighborhoods- 60,000 pounds yesterday alone. Trucks are diverted to them for box production while the warehouse handles pallet level distribution with our trucks and a number of large trucks in the area from a wide assortment of disaster relief organizations and churches.
Knowing that our Mississippi and Alabama service area is only part of the area impacted area should give you and indication of the scope of this operation when you add the other partners involved in this effort. I receive calls from Mike Halligan, Al Brislain, Dan LaBonte, as well as Mark, Stephanie or Mitzi daily to see if there is anything additional we need and check on how things are going. Ertharin contacts me periodic for a “sanity check” as well. We also received a much appreciated immediate $25,000 grant to help with the immediate upsurge in activity/costs we’ve experienced and will experience in the coming weeks.
The national staff is also working to determine the long range needs we’ll have as the 1st phase of relief dies down and we move into supporting agencies trying to restart after their repairs are complete and handle vastly increased numbers of requests for support. To put this in perspective, only about 60% of our west Florida agencies have returned to helping the community since Hurricane Ivan struck 12 months ago next week. At the same time, distribution in west Florida since last September has increased 50% to meet the needs. I expect a similar situation over the next year with our Mississippi service area and with need in our Alabama and Florida service area related to displaced persons.
Thanks to all for the support and offers of support. It is truly appreciated. You can track our daily progress and find some pictures on our web site www.bayareafoodbank.org
Our media contacts working to keep people informed are Shearie Archer sarcher@secondharvest.org and Anita Havel ahavel@secondharvest.org
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