South Florida Sun-Sentinel (Sunday)
Salvation Army brings meals and hope to Southwest Florida
The devastation wrought by Hurricane Ian left thousands of people having to regroup their lives and recover possessions that were destroyed by the storm.
In the immediate aftermath of the storm, many groups and organizations reached out to lend a hand to those affected by the record-breaking hurricane. The Salvation Army has been there on the front lines.
Teams of “soldiers” from the Broward and Palm Beach Salvation Army staff traveled across the state to be there when Ian hit so that they could be ready to head out and help those in need the next day and the weeks following.
They brought in their Canteen, a vehicle that helps to feed hot meals to people who are in need because of damage to their homes, flooding or other emergencies after a disaster. The Salvation Army deployed these kitchens on wheels after Ian with the teams that went out to the scene. A single Canteen can provide food for 500 to 5,000 individuals, depending on the unit.
The strategy of assistance
Maj. Stephen Long, area commander and pastor of the Salvation Army Church, described how assistance to the front lines of a disaster works:
They chart out areas in need at the disaster site, then the Canteen Commander gives directions and sends out teams. At that point, the team goes out to go from street to street to feed and help people when they come out of their homes.
“You have your first responders, which are fire stations and electric companies who clear the way to allow our people to help the assistance organizations to come in and support the first responders with meals, in addition to helping the families in need there,” he said.
Long said there are Salvation Army organizations in every one of the areas that were hit by Ian. He said they were holding down the fort and communicating back and forth.
“Our Divisional Incident Command coordinates all the activity with the state itself,” he said. “The state of Florida gives our command center a heads up on where they can go in these kinds of emergency situations. The state also tells them where they can’t go, because other organizations may already be doing things there” such as the Red Cross, the fire department and the police.
Long said that it’s standard procedure that, once you’re deployed to a disaster scene, they make a two-week commitment to stay there. He said that their teams are on the scene on a rotating basis until they’re no longer needed. Their team was deployed to Lakeland just before the storm hit, but they weren’t mobilized until after the storm.
“We had no idea exactly when the storm was going to hit,” he said. “That’s why we were stationed there early, so that they would be in their position, ready to respond when needed.”
Broward County team
Two members of the first team from the Broward Salvation Army shared their experiences after spending two weeks on the front lines in Fort Myers and Port Charlotte.
Kevin Small has worked for the Salvation Army for about 17 years and has helped with many disaster relief situations.
“On Tuesday, the day before Ian was to hit, Maj. Long gave me a call and said we’re mobilizing,” he said. “He asked if I was willing to go. I think it was less than a minute when I said, ‘yes, absolutely.’ ”
Small said five people went to the west coast to respond right away in a Canteen truck, which has two ovens and two large skillets. One skillet cooks about 50 pounds of rice at a time.
Small’s experience staying in Lakeland before the storm hit was a bit scary, even for the team.
“On Tuesday night before the storm hit, we stayed in a Lakeland Salvation Army shelter for homeless families,” he said. “While we were staying there, you could just hear the wind and the rain rattling outside. You could hardly sleep because the door was shaking and vibrating.”
Small had a tough time waiting after the storm hit to be deployed.
“The hardest part was actually waiting after the hurricane hit to go out and help, because you want to rush right away,” he said. “But the danger out there involved the debris, the light poles, the winds and the power lines that were down. So the command held us back at first. They told us it wasn’t time yet.”
Sandrea Levy, another soldier with the Salvation Army, said that Hurricane Ian was the only one she has been through since she was a young girl in Jamaica. Although this was her first relief effort, Levy said it definitely won’t be her last.
Levy said she was stunned at the kind of impact that intense hurricanes can have on people and the surroundings once it passes.
“The first thing we did the morning after the hurricane came through was to go straight to Fort Myers,” she said. “When we got there, we saw schools that were underwater. There were even fish in the streets, because of the storm surge from Ian.”
Levy said they saw a family
of 10 as they were assessing one of the communities. They were all huddling together at a bus stop. There was even a baby with a car seat, she said.
“They were there because everything was gone,” Levy said. “Everything was in the streets. Everything was underneath water. The family looked dazed from what had happened to them.”
Small said that they all knew that they were on a mission to seek out and find people who were hungry and in need.
“We traveled from city to city finding locations where people needed to eat, where the water couldn’t be drunk,” he said. “The power was out and the trees were down in many areas. Sometimes we couldn’t even get to some of our locations to serve people because of all the chaos.”
The Broward team hit the ground running once they were given the command from the Salvation Army coordinators. One of the first places they stopped was at a Jehovah’s Witnesses church.
“We put up our canopy from the Canteen and we started cooking right away,” Small said. “Lots of times we get prepared food from Baptist churches by our arrangement, but we didn’t have that this time. So on the very first day, we started cooking, and within an hour and a half, we had served 950 meals of chili and rice.”
The appreciation came flowing in from people almost immediately.
“On the second day we were there, a nurse came by and she and her husband pulled up to the Canteen,” Levy said. “She was crying because she said she had seen so much devastation at the hospital where she works. They both just started hugging us and thanking our team for being there.”
Small, Levy and the rest of the team worked tirelessly for two weeks, feeding thousands of meals to people in the region. The other part of their mission was to feed
A line of people wait for hot meals from a Salvation Army Canteen truck.
their souls.
“There were five people from the Salvation Army serving up everyone, both with food and with raising up the spirits of the people there,” Levy said. “There was even an ordained minister there for what we call spiritual care.”
Long talked about the spiritual element.
“It’s important that we not only feed people, but that we talk about the ‘bread of life’ as well,” he said. “We had over 8,000 individuals who we prayed with and talked to about spiritual care throughout the affected areas during those first two weeks. That’s one of the key reasons why we’re there, which is to throw our arms around these people and shower love on them.”
Palm Beach County team
Dan Hager is the chaplain with the Palm Beach County Salvation Army. He was one of the five members of their team who were first to respond to the need on the west coast.
“I was with the first wave of a disaster,” Hager said. “Hurricane Ian is the sixth storm I have been out to help with relief.”
The Palm Beach team also was sent out before the storm hit so that they could respond quickly.
“I only got word on Monday about going,” he said. “They took us to Lakeland so that we were in a position where, as soon as everything was open, we could get in there quicker. On Thursday, after the storm
had come through, we sent a strike force out from Lakeland that involved a Canteen and another vehicle.”
During that first wave, they have to bring 500 meals that can be cooked for locals in the Canteen because they work out in the field.
As a chaplain, Hager had personal experiences from the response to Ian that echoed his experiences with other hurricane disaster relief efforts.
“There are two things I see that always hit me,” he said. “One is that people’s priorities get put straight in disasters like these as we’re trying to cheer them up. You look at somebody who’s got a feeling of hopelessness, so you’re providing hope with a smile, a bottle of cold water and asking how many meals of hot food we can give them.”
Hagen said that, despite the desperate conditions that so many people experienced as a result of Ian, they somehow gain insight into what really matters.
“I would hear how people had lost their roof, or even how their house was gone,” he said. “Especially for those who lived in a mobile home, they would often tell me that it is completely wiped out. But at the end of their sentences was always, ‘But I’m alive!’ or ‘My children are OK.’ ”
“I would pray to God to help people hang on to this spirit that we see,” he said. “It sometimes takes a tragedy to see it clearly, but our country needs that kind of caring for each other.”
Visit Give.HelpSalvationArmy.org. Call 800-725-2769 or text STORM to 51555.