As residents of Southeast Louisiana continue to recover from Hurricane Ida, Second Harvest Food Bank of Greater New Orleans and Acadiana continue to deliver aid to residents across the fourteen parishes impacted by this major storm.
To date, Second Harvest has delivered more than 4.5 million pounds of food, water, and disaster supplies to tens of thousands of Ida survivors, according to Second Harvest. Staff and volunteers have also prepared and distributed more than 110,543 hot meals from the organization’s community kitchen, including St. Joseph’s Diner in Lafayette.
“Our team has prided itself on being there long before and long after any emergency,” said Second Harvest President & CEO Natalie Jayroe. “We’re now in the long haul of recovery as so many of us have been through in past storms. Many residents who do have power back on will still not be able to live in their homes for weeks or months to come.”
Second Harvest has collected and delivered supplies to residents of Iberia, Jefferson, LaFourche, Orleans, Plaquemines, St Bernard, St Charles, St John, St Martin, St Mary, St Tammany, Tangipahoa, Terrebonne, and Washington Parishes; as well as residents displaced in Lafayette Parish. Some of these supplies were also collected through the Spirit of Acadiana Food and Supply Drive.
The Second Harvest Lafayette facility at 215 E Pinhook Road has been a main staging site for dozens of truckloads of inbound food, water, and supplies from FEMA, product donors, and other Feeding America food banks across the region.
“More than a year later, we are helping people in Southwest Louisiana who are still rebuilding their lives following Hurricane Laura. Ida was a category-4 storm as well, and we will be in these Southeast Louisiana communities for as long as it takes.”
The food bank has a regular service area of twenty-three parishes across South Louisiana. Even as the hurricane response rolled out millions of pounds of support to fourteen parishes, Second Harvest continued regular, uninterrupted operations in nine other parishes, making regular deliveries to churches, food pantries, shelters, schools, and other community partners in areas spared by the storm.
And their disaster-response plan sees them continuing to deliver to deliver non-perishable food, supplies, and hot meals to the hardest-hit areas for a long time to come. Jayroe says her team is prepared for anything else that may come our way in 2021. “While Ida was such a sudden storm, we prepare year-round to respond to emergencies like these as soon as it is safe to do so. The need caused by Ida is on a massive scale, and I’m very proud of how our team, partners, and volunteers mobilized so quickly,” she said. “Last year, we handled responses to three hurricanes and the Covid-19 crisis. We hope this year’s hurricane season doesn’t give us another storm, but we are prepared if our state faces that again.”
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