Firefighters launch food drive today

Some local kids are going to help “Wash Away Hunger” this week as part of the Chattanooga Fire Department’s 10th anniversary food drive to benefit the Chattanooga Area Food Bank.

Students at three schools will get to skip class to draw chalk art and messages about hunger. When they’re done, Chattanooga firefighters will supply hoses to wash away the art, and then pick up food the students collected for the drive.

Fire Chief Chris Adams thought up the idea, CFD spokesman Bruce Garner said in a news release.

“We’re so glad these schools have decided to participate in our first-ever Wash Away Hunger event,” Adams said in the release. “It should be a fun and educational exercise for the students, and what they may not

know, is that some of their classmates may be getting the food they collected.”

The weeklong drive launches today at Food City on East Brainerd Road. Firefighters will be there from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. to accept food and money donations. Through Sept. 18, city residents can drop off donations at any of the department’s 19 fire stations, Garner said.

The Chattanooga Area Food Bank distributed 13.25 million meals throughout the community last year, communications director Elizabeth Weidenaar said. Almost 159,000 people in the food bank’s 21 counties in Southeast Tennessee and North Georgia “struggle to gain access to food,” she said.

All the food collected in the CFD drive will be used in the emergency food box program, she said. The food bank partners with more than 300 local nonprofits, and some of those provide vouchers so people in need can get immediate food supplies from the food bank’s distribution center on Curtainpole Road.

The food bank also provides sack packs to schoolkids who may not have enough to eat on weekends, and takes mobile pantries to schools and other sites in areas where people don’t have easy access to nutritious foods, she said.

“The firefighters have been wonderful partners for the last 10 years,” Weidenaar said. “They talk about how they are there to help in emergency situations and this is another example of the way they are serving the community, [helping] people who are making the hard choice between paying their bills or putting food on the table.”