Second Anniversary of Hurricane Katrina

Today marks the 2^nd anniversary of the landfall of Hurricane Katrina. Since that landfall made such a large impact on the Bay Area Food Bank, our Mississippi service area and the rest of America in the weeks that followed, I figured it was a good theme to lead off my September update. Today lots of media will cover the recovery efforts still going on, work still waiting to be done and work already completed. It will largely focus on possessions lost and possessions gained and ignore all the things it took to get to the state we are today. Not so this time two years ago. In the weeks following landfall people worried about just finding a place to sleep, a meal to eat and a way to contact loved ones. People thanked strangers for simple gestures of kindness and shared whatever they had with others. Today arguments swirl around the level of preparedness individuals should be expected to take, the height to which homes in the flood plain should be elevated, whether insurance, the government or the individual should pay for damage and how much money should be spent protecting homes built on barrier islands, the city of New Orleans and/or the coastal swamp communities of Louisiana.

For me the good news is that our job at the Food Bank does not involve working among the anger over not being helped enough, arguments about placing blame, legal decisions related to blame or the task of finding the billions of dollars for a government solution that may or may not be government’s to solve. We deal in stage one- getting food to people who need it now. That’s no small challenge in itself and involves preparation at our warehouse, the organizations we support and among the staff of America’s Second Harvest-The Nation’s Food Bank Network. The millions upon millions of pounds of food distributed in the weeks following Hurricane Katrina and Hurricane Rita allowed people to move beyond a simple need for food and shelter. We can be proud of the effort thousands of people undertook in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama with no expectation of gain, except the satisfaction of helping someone who needed help. Having spent the past 15 months working with members of the national staff and staffs from other Food Banks on improvements in our network disaster plan, I can say that America’s Second Harvest is ready to help again if needed. The construction at our Theodore warehouse undertaken to expand our capacity along with the 20 emergency response pantries we’ve placed along the Alabama and Mississippi Coast are the Bay Area Food Bank’s effort to do more, faster in the future. Today may be a time when most look back. We’re focused on looking forward, continuing our day to day mission while preparing for a future storm. No major depressions forming in the tropics today, that’s good news!

Executive Director's update for August

Well we’re half way through August and the Atlantic and Gulf Coast has had a quiet hurricane season so far. Of course, I saw a historical weather chart the other day that shows that tropical activity peaks on September 10th and the most active days are 15 days on either side. It now looks like Hurricane Dean will become a pest to someone on the coast right at the front end of the 15 day side, around August 22nd or 23rd. All the weather people are pointing speculatively towards the western gulf, which is good news for us. We’re still plenty busy with the construction of the warehouse addition, no roof yet, so we’d prefer to be fairly rain free until the roof is on.

One thing our recent experience with storms has provided us is the background to prepare better. Our file servers are on rolling carts for movement to the strongest areas of the facility. We’ve got wireless laptops as well as wireless plugs and standby batteries for the desktop computers. We can protect inventory and information files and begin distribution operations even if the office complex is damaged. We’ve got a stash of plastic to cover areas if the roof springs a leak, extra fuel for the generator and updated phone lists. In one sense we’re lucky that our most likely disaster is a hurricane because we get lots of notice as it moves our way. It is much more challenging for those faced with sudden disasters like earth quakes.

Last week I spent a full day in Chicago along with ten members of the America’s Second Harvest national staff and four other food bank directors discussing strategic goals related to childhood hunger. Childhood hunger, or lack of proper nutrition, is one of those issues I can wrap my arms around. Kids live day to day with the cards they are dealt. Yet, with a good basic education and good health, their potential in America is unlimited.

Tuesday I was part of the strategic plan development process to ensure proper emphasis is placed in the right areas to achieve the overall goal of reducing hunger by 1 million people per year for the next five years. It is estimated that 400,000 of the 1 million each year will be children. Figuring out how to balance use of a finite amount of energy and money to impact programs like food stamps, after school snacks, food pantry distributions and summer lunches in the most effective way possible is no easy task. No single program can do it all so we spent a lot of time trying to identify ways to track improvement. Knowing what is working will help us focus better. For example, food stamp participation rates might improve if we advocate for a simpler application process in states with low participation rates while in other states, improvement may take the form of financial support to cover the additional costs associated with serving people in widely dispersed rural areas. I was encouraged by the level of concern on the part of everyone in the work session and believe a good balance of advocacy, funding and personal energy can make things better for millions of people. To me, children are the highest priority.