In the wake of a disaster like Hurricane Ian, the American Red Cross and Second Harvest Food Bank have a shared mission: Be sure no one goes hungry.
In Orlando, the two organizations have worked together for years.
“I don’t know exactly when it all started, but they have been a great partner,” Michele Shepherd said of Second Harvest. She’s been a volunteer with the Greater Orlando Chapter of the Red Cross for 16 years.
The day before Ian tore across Florida, a team of volunteers and staff from Second Harve gathered at six in the morning to unload a food delivery and then headed home to wait.
The day after the storm, the team regrouped at their Orlando warehouse and organized a volunteer shift to start preparing food for those most impacted. The Red Cross pays for the ingredients or shelf-stable items used.
“Our volunteers and team members came in Saturday morning and started making shelf stable boxes that the Red Cross could leave with people in need,” said Nancy Brumbaugh, chief food services officer for Second Harvest Food Bank of Central Florida.
“We got our first call from the Red Cross about noon asking for our help. I just said, ‘Come on down, we’re ready for you.”
The food bank prepared 2,100 hot meals and another 2,500 cold meals on Oct. 8 to be distributed at local Red Cross-run shelters and on emergency response trucks that deliver hot food and snacks to the hardest hit communities within about an hour of Orlando.
A typical meal from Second Harvest includes a grilled chicken salad, whole wheat dinner roll, fruit cup, and an oatmeal cookie, or meatloaf, mac and cheese, and fried apples.
The food bank does more than prepare food and hand it over to over to the Red Cross. “The Second Harvest team is delivering meals for us, so our drivers can get services delivered to other places,” Shepherd said. “They have their own trailers and delivery equipment. It’s a big help.”
Producing food in quantity is nothing new for Second Harvest. “We were producing about 1.7 million meals a year before COVID. That number jumped during the worst of COVID to five million. Right now, we’re probably doing about two million,” Brumbaugh said.
In the first week after the hurricane passed, Second Harvest packed 60,000 boxes of shelf-stable food for distribution.
The partnership continues in “blue skies” periods, between disasters.
“Something we did (that was) really cool with Red Cross a few years ago was an emergency response vehicle driver training at the food bank,” Shepherd said. “We had class time for the drivers, and then they had to pick up the food just like in a disaster. After picking up the food, they had to deliver and serve the food to children at a summer camp.”
Written by Brian Murnahan, American Red Cross