by Marcia Antipa, American Red Cross

“Everybody’s happy when the food shows up!”

American Red Cross volunteer Jeanne Reinelt and her husband, Doug, are delivering hot meals to neighborhoods devastated by Hurricanes Helene and Milton. It takes hard work, a talented crew of cooks, and an army of willing Red Cross volunteers.

In Sarasota, Florida, a dozen chefs and restaurant workers from Texas and Louisiana rise at 3 a.m. and prepare their mobile site in the parking lot of a large church. The Red Cross is partnering with BRG Disaster Solutions to cook lunch and dinner using a custom-designed cooker modeled after a crawfish-boiling rig, common in the organizations home base in New Orleans. Today's offering is teriyaki chicken, sesame rice and vegetables and Hawaiian rolls.

Daniel Blue, who owns a restaurant in Houston, Texas, supervised the crew.

“With this footprint here, it’s pretty mobile, we can pack all of our tents, all of our equipment onto these rigs and with our one refrigerated truck, we can set up and cook 20,000 meals a day.”

BRG began responding to disasters after Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans. This year alone, it has partnered with the Red Cross to respond to three Hurricanes – Francine, Helene and Milton.

Jessica DeLatte works as the liaison between BRG and the Red Cross. She began responding to disasters after enduring Hurricane Katrina in her home state of Louisiana. Now, she gets choked up when she sees those Red Cross vehicles roll out filled with food.

“I was ready to get up here as soon as I could and just help these people as long as I could because I know what they are going through.”

Red Cross volunteers help the BRG team load large containers of the food onto specially equipped emergency response vehicles (ERVs). Teams of two or three Red Crossers deliver those meals to shelters and into communities across Florida.

Husband and wife volunteers Jeanne and Doug Reinelt drove one of these Red Cross emergency trucks to Florida, all the way from Fort Worth, Texas. Married for 44 years, this is their third deployment together. In Sarasota, the Reinelts lined up with a half a dozen other Red Cross ERVs, loaded their vehicle with food and drove into areas where the hurricanes left homes in shambles. Along their route, people paused the long process of cleaning up after their homes were flooded,and gratefully accepted hot meals, water and smiles.

“They were just so happy to have a meal. They were exhausted from mucking out their homes and carrying heavy furniture to the curb. It’s heavy duty, hard physical work.”

Jeanne has volunteered for years with the Red Cross, not only deploying to disasters, but also bringing comfort kits and blankets to people evacuated during home fires in her home region.

“When bad things happen, I always want to help, and the great thing about volunteering with the Red Cross is that I’m actually trained to help in a very tangible way.”

Volunteer training, along with partnerships with restaurants and chefs, enables the Red Cross to bring food and comfort directly to those hit hard by disaster. If you would like to help with that mission, by volunteering your time, or making a donation, visit redcross.org or call 1-800-REDCROSS.