Source: The Washington Post / Getty
INDIANAPOLIS — It’s a life or death situation and time is of the essence. Gleaners Food Bank of Indiana is on the move, sending supplies to areas hit hardest by Hurricane Helene.
“This is as bad a disaster, I think, we’ve seen since Hurricane Katrina,” says Joe Slater, Chief Operating Officer of Gleaners Food Bank of Indiana. The organization began relief efforts last Friday, sending out seven truckloads of food and other supplies to Georgia as Helene was still covering the region.
Since then, Gleaners and the Feeding America network are prepping food and supplies and sending them out to places like the Atlanta Food Bank, Second Harvest of East Tennessee, and the western part of North Carolina. Helene had already killed dozens of people before hitting North Carolina, but once it hit, whole towns were wiped out and dozens more people lost their lives.
FULL INTERVIEW WITH JOE SLATER, COO OF GLEANERS FOOD BANK OF INDIANA:
Slater says speed is of the utmost importance, “the ability to quickly move inventory into place where it is needed is just vital in these kinds of situations.”