Jay Vise is the Communications Director for Second Harvest Food Bank.
He’s also a former journalist and correspondent for WWL-AM/FM.COM.
Vise is on the ground in the hurricane zone.
He’s working hand-in-hand with the everyday volunteers and workers of Second Harvest to get relief supplies they’ve raised to the people who need them most—the survivors of the strongest hurricane in more than 150-years.
“I’ve been here more than week, preparing for what happened,” Vise says.
The first thing Vise talks about is the scale of the disaster.
“This is a statewide disaster on top of another disaster, the ongoing crisis of COVID-19.
For organizations like ours its crisis upon crisis and it’s really stretching us thin.”
“I was talking with some people in New Orleans that didn’t realize how big this thing was,” he says. “It’s way beyond Lake Charles. Getting on the ground in Southwest Louisiana, it is much, much bigger than just Lake Charles. And it is devastating in Lake Charles and Cameron and Vermillion Parishes but towns like Alexandria, little towns in between, dozens of little towns all the way up to Shreveport have all been impacted.”
One town that has left an impression on Vise is the small town of Vinton, Louisiana, near the Texas border.
“A small church has dozens of families there because they have nowhere else to go because their houses are destroyed or are gone.”
Vise says Second Harvest, working with the National Guard, are providing meals and supplies every day for the people who have lost everything.
Vise says there’s town-after-towns just like Vinton which are in a public health crisis and need relief in the form of cleaning supplies, clean up help, and people to come and help them stand up again.
“We need donations of every type of supply you can imagine for a disaster,” Vise emphasizes. “Food, water, cleaning supplies. Everything thing from bleaches, to gloves, to rakes, and things like that.”
Vise also says Second Harvest is serving food to people who are sheltering in the hotels around the region as far as New Orleans!
“We’ve seen thousands of people who are living in hotels. Every hotel from Lake Charles to Lafayette to Baton Rouge is full.” But Vise also points out, “There are people sleeping in their yards. There are people whose homes may not be damaged, but they’re without power. We’ve seen everything in between, thousands and thousands of families out of their homes, or trying to live in their homes when it’s not habitable...when it’s not safe to do so.”
Vise says Second Harvest is more than a meal provider at this point, they’re trying to get their hands on everything to donate to the survivors.
“The donations we need are anything you can find in a grocery store.”
“We are working with anyone and everyone who want to help out,” Vise says. “God Bless Rouse's, who has two stores in Lake Charles that are closed right now, they’re donating their parking lot and water so we’ve got mass distribution there.”
“But what we really need are monetary donations to keep these trucks rolling not just to Southwest Louisiana, but our regular operations to food pantries are still under way.”
If you have supplies you’d like to donate you can drop them off at Second Harvest Food Bank at 700 Edwards Avenue in New Orleans. You can also make a donation: Click Here to go to their webpage.