‘Longest week of our lives’: Texas food banks in crisis as storm disrupts supplies | Texas

Texas food banks have gone into disaster mode as they scale up operations to fight rising hunger after unprecedented freezing conditions that disrupted nearly every element of the state’s food supply chain .

Grocery stores are empty, school lunch programs suspended and deliveries interrupted by untreated treacherous roads that have left millions of Texans trapped in precarious living conditions with dwindling food supplies.

Even those who stocked up before arctic conditions arrived have lost refrigerated groceries due to long power outages and cannot cook what they have without electricity and gas.

In the worst affected areas, food banks and pantries were forced to close for several days this week as it was impossible for staff and vehicles to reach distribution sites. Relief was limited to first aid boxes sent to people seeking refuge in heated shelters.

On Thursday, disruption to energy and clean water supplies prompted food banks to scramble to source copious amounts of bottled water and ready meals and snacks that don’t require cooking.

“It’s a disaster. We do rapid needs assessments so that we can quickly provide appropriate food to these people. When everything thaws, we prepare for a massive increase in demand,” said Valerie Hawthorne, director of government relations at the Dallas-based North Texas Food Bank. “This has been the longest week of our lives.”

Before the great freeze, this food bank operated two drive-through food distribution sites each day, serving between 300 and 1,500 families in each pop-up location. This week they have all been canceled, even though one is scheduled for Saturday, leaving thousands of families without sufficient food or dependent on relatives, neighbors and support groups.

In addition to regulars, advocates expect an increase in the number of low-paid service workers – who are often just one or two paychecks away from hunger and won’t be paid this week as many restaurants and bars have been forced to close.

Hunger was a serious problem in Texas even before the pandemic and the last weather disaster, with an estimated 4.3 million Texans experiencing hunger in 2019, including one in five children.

Covid has sparked an economic crisis that has led to a doubling of demand for food aid in many areas of Texas amid record unemployment and underemployment rates.

According to Brian Greene, CEO of the Houston Food Bank, the extraordinary freeze has once again exposed deep inequalities that will make the job of low-income households much harder to recover. “The consequences of each disaster are much more difficult for low-income families, who are going to have more problems even after the return of electricity and water,” he said.

Nearly two-fifths of Americans don’t have enough cash or savings to deal with an unexpected $ 400 expense like burst pipes or a collapsed roof, according to a Federal Reserve study,

In rural Brazoria County, south of Houston, the pantry reopened Thursday and served 140 families in just two hours – up from 170 families usually seen in a typical week. About 75% were desperate newbies for food and water and they were given enough for three days because that’s all the pantry had available.

“It’s crazy. People have no more options. They’ve gone into survival mode to get what they can,” said Terri Willis, general manager of the Brazoria County Dream Center, which runs the pantry. . “We are all in disaster mode.”

Long queues stretch outside grocery stores with empty shelves, and water supplies have been cut off by boil water advisories and burst pipes; electricity is needed for people in rural areas with private wells.

Willis is particularly concerned about vulnerable children in the district, as her organization typically provides a weekend meal backpack for 620 children who would otherwise go hungry. Schools are closed, so these children will do without. “It’s heartbreaking. I was one of those hungry kids on the weekends. I pray that their parents can come here, ”said Willis.

In Dallas, young people are also a major concern: Across the city, 87% of school children live in low-income households. Thousands of people depend on free school meals, with some receiving four meals a day – breakfast, lunch, snack and dinner – but many schools were unable to provide them this week due to power cuts, burst pipes, warning of water consumption and water shortages.

Advocates are also worried about the city’s elderly residents who depend on food aid to get enough food and who may have been cut off from all services for several days. “It was the elderly who kept most of us from sleeping this week. These really are the most vulnerable populations, and we just don’t know how many of them couldn’t get help, ”Hawthorne said.

At the other end of the food chain, the Rio Grande Valley’s fruit and vegetable crops have been wrecked by extreme cold, as dairy farmers across the state dump millions of dollars in milk down the drain because they can’t get it to the dairies. The fall in production could have short and medium term consequences on availability and prices.

Scientists have long warned that global warming is leading to an increase in the frequency and intensity of extreme weather events – and hitting places unaccustomed and ill-equipped to deal with extreme heat or freezing temperatures .

The disruption of food supplies in Texas shows how ill-prepared the United States is to deal with the climate crisis, according to Molly Anderson, director of the food studies program at Middlebury College in Vermont.

“What we’re seeing in Texas demonstrates a lack of planning for resilience and a failure to recognize that the bizarre climate is here and is already impacting the food chain,” she said.