A team of volunteers from East Texas Food Bank helps hundreds of families June 22 at the Gladewater Rodeo Arena.
More than 40 volunteers from East Texas Food Bank turned out to help 674 Gladewater households June 20 in the midst of area-wide power outages.
When storm winds raged through the area, felling trees and wrecking transmission lines, they left more than 100,000 East Texans without power and with refrigerators full of spoiling food.
East Texas Food Bank staged a series of emergency food distributions across the area, including a Thursday morning operation at the Gladewater Rodeo Area.
“We know there’s a lot of need here in this community after the power outages that happened,” Rebecca Berkley said in an on-site livestream last week. According to the food bank’s director of communications and marketing, “A lot of severe weather has caused a lot problems throughout East Texas, and this is the first of several (mobile pantries) we’re going to be hosting this week.
“Today people are going to be receiving a lot of different vegetables. We have onions, potatoes, watermelons, blueberries and also are going to be giving out emergency food boxes that have a lot of shelf stable foods in it.”
For individuals and families with ongoing needs, Berkley suggested logging on to EastTexasFoodBank.org then clicking on ‘Find Food’ for a list of pantries throughout East Texas.
“So many people have lost all the food in their refrigerators from the power outages,” Berkley said. “We hope we can help a lot of families in East Texas this week.”
To learn more about the food bank, to volunteer or to make a monetary donation, log on to EastTexasFoodBank.org or call 903-597-3663.