Food bank bounces back from Helene to tackle hunger crisis in western NC
The staff of the Asheville-based Manna Foodbank tried their best to prepare for Hurricane Helene.
Workers at the nonprofit’s primary distribution site just feet from the Swannanoa River moved tens of thousands of food items onto tall shelves ahead of the storm’s arrival. The shelves, they thought, would be high enough to protect the food if the building flooded.
But after the storm’s catastrophic lurch through western North Carolina, the region’s largest and most wide-reaching food bank was almost fully submerged in rippling waves of brown water. Its stockpile of food, now more badly needed than ever, was gone.
“We weren’t even able to go in and rescue any of the top-shelf food or anything because of how severely damaged everything was,” said Micah Chrisman, director of communications for Manna. “We lost everything. Our forklifts, our warehouse, all of our computers. The whole operation, basically.”
That operation served more than 150,000 people a month in western North Carolina, which struggles with worse levels of food insecurity than other parts of the state. About 20 percent of adults in the region have limited or uncertain access to food, according to the WNC Health Network.
The area’s hunger issues arise from several economic, geographic and social factors: Poverty and unemployment are more pervasive there than in eastern and central North Carolina, and many residents are unable to afford food. The predominantly rural and mountainous terrain can make a trip to the nearest grocery store challenging for people without transportation.
“We definitely had an issue with food insecurity already, especially in rural communities where some of these families that I’ve met and talked with have to drive over 30 minutes in any direction just to get food of any kind,” Chrisman said. “There were a lot of food deserts that already existed here. People might have been able to get junk food from a gas station, but they didn’t have access to actual groceries.”
Helene, he said, has “only exacerbated the need” for nourishment. In the days after the deadly storm, western North Carolina went from being one of the most food-insecure parts of the state to being, arguably, one of the hardest places to find food in the nation.
Wiped out
Fortunately, Manna moved its fleet of trucks to higher ground before Helene barreled through the area. The vehicles were undamaged, which allowed the food bank to quickly establish a pop-up distribution site with supplies donated by Feeding America, a nonprofit national network of more than 200 food banks, and the N.C. Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services.
“All of our inventory was completely wiped out at the start of this, and so we had to replenish the supplies,” Chrisman said. “Since then, some incredible efforts have come together where grocery chains and different places that are coming back online are able to give us some of their food resources that are still safe to consume.”
Overturned vehicles near the site of Manna Foodbank’s destroyed facility in Asheville.
Credit: Manna Foodbank
Several of the families who have relied on Manna for meals in recent weeks did not struggle for food before the storm, Chrisman said. Some may have had refrigerators loaded with food that went bad after days without power. Others might have been forced to flee their flooded homes and were unable to find food elsewhere.
“There are people from the hardest-hit communities who are coming to us in need of food assistance that maybe would not normally need assistance because they might have been laid off from their job because the business was flooded,” Chrisman said.
Many people in the area, he added, have been “humbled by this whole ordeal of having no running water for all this time and not having access to food.”
Chrisman said some of the food bank’s employees and volunteers “lost their homes and everything else” to the hurricane. Undeterred by their own hardship, they have continued working throughout the crisis.
“They’re still showing up every day helping deliver food or distribute food to families in need,” he said.
Manna has leased a shuttered FedEx facility near the Asheville Regional Airport to serve as its new center of operations. The food bank has also been rebuilding its stockpile with donated goods.
“As the word’s gotten out, people have been sending orders from Amazon and Instacart or driving up with bags of groceries because they had extra and just wanted to give to the people who need it most,” Chrisman said.
Road to recovery
Other efforts are being made to address food insecurity in Helene’s wake.
Last week, Gov. Roy Cooper’s office said FEMA and other “federal partners” had delivered 9.7 million liters of water and 7.7 million meals “to support both responders and people living in the affected communities.” Writing in a news release on Sunday, the White House said FEMA “continues to send commodity shipments and voluntary organizations are supporting feeding operations with bulk food and water deliveries coming via truck and aircraft.”
“Mobile feeding operations are reaching survivors in heavily impacted areas, including three mass feeding sites in Buncombe, McDowell and Watauga counties,” the release said, adding that the “massive operation” is being bolstered by The Salvation Army, which has deployed mobile kitchens to the area.
Credit: Courtesy of Manna Foodbank
William Ray, director of N.C. Emergency Management, said his agency is assisting with “feeding operations in concert with our local partners.”
“This is a historic disaster, the magnitude of which we have never experienced before in our state,” Ray said during a recent news conference. “The road to recovery will be long, but North Carolinians are strong and resilient, and together we will recover.”
At the same conference, Kody Kinsley, secretary of the N.C. Department of Health and Human Services, said more than 10,000 cases of baby formula had been delivered to the region. The department, he said, had also increased the flexibility of its Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, allowing recipients to buy hot food, which is ordinarily not covered, from participating vendors through Nov. 3.
On Oct. 6, NCDHHS reissued 70 percent of the previous month’s SNAP benefits to help people in the disaster area replace food that had been lost or was no longer safe to eat. More than 227,000 beneficiaries across a 23-county swathe of western North Carolina automatically received the reimbursement, totaling $24 million in benefits.
Beginning Tuesday, storm victims who are not currently enrolled in SNAP can pre-register for a one-time stipend to buy food through the Disaster Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or D-SNAP. The program is open to people who “suffered losses/damages related to Hurricane Helene,” according to NCDHHS.
Pre-registration can be completed online through the state’s ePass service. Registration will be available by phone and in-person at designated offices in the affected counties beginning Friday.
“Much is underway, and there will be much more to do,” Kinsley said. “We all remain committed to the health and well-being of everyone in the region, in mind and body, for the long haul.”
Apply for Disaster-SNAP
Online pre-registration begins Tuesday, Oct 15.
Beginning Friday, Oct. 18, residents can apply by phone by calling the D-SNAP Virtual Call Center at 1-844-453-1117 from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. on weekdays, and from 9 a.m. to noon on Saturday and Sunday.
To manage call volumes, individuals are asked to call on their assigned day based on the first letter of their last name:
10/18: A-G
10/19: H-M
10/20: N-S
10/21: T-Z
10/22-24: Open to all
Local residents can also apply in person in their home counties.
A list of application locations is available online.
The post Food bank bounces back from Helene to tackle hunger crisis in western NC appeared first on North Carolina Health News.
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