The day after Hurricane Ian devastated Florida on Sept. 28, Joe Myerly drove a flatbed carrying five massive meat smokers and a dry truck full of kitchen supplies to Port Charlotte Town Center in Charlotte County.
Emergency crews in boats, rescuing people trapped in their homes, blocked a freeway exit, the 55-year-old truck driver said. Myerly passed them as he navigated the treacherous roads from a staging area on the Georgia Line to deliver much-needed supplies after the Category 4 hurricane.
“It was an obstacle course going around for the first four or five days,” said Myerly, who lives in Hagerstown, Maryland. “Right now, [conditions] are improving, but there is still much to clear up. … Electricity poles lay. The trees are in the streets.”
Myerly, part of a volunteer team for the nonprofit disaster relief operation Operation BBQ Relief, helped the organization set up and supply a free meal distribution site that aims to provide at least one million hot lunches and dinners to Florida residents who have need after the storm.
The nonprofit organization has relied on truckers like Myerly to provide post-disaster food distribution efforts since it was founded in 2011. But an extra push from the trucking industry after Hurricane Ian is supporting what is becoming the organization’s largest response yet. today.
The American Logistics Aid Network, a transportation industry nonprofit founded after Hurricane Katrina, has contributed transportation, food storage trailers and other free assistance. Operation BBQ Relief officials say the help has proven vital to the site’s ability to serve 60,000 to 80,000 meals a day.
“It’s been a godsend for us,” said Chris Huggins, director of logistics and transportation for Operation BBQ Relief.
“He needs a lot of food”
Flood waters forced the closure of Interstate 75 on September 30, temporarily trapping Myerly in Florida during the installation of the distribution site. Once the highway reopened, he left again to pick up pallets of canned vegetables, food containers and more from Texas, South Carolina and Georgia.
“It takes a lot of food,” Myerly said.
In the past week alone, the nonprofit has sourced several green beans from Wisconsin, mixed vegetables from Virginia, bread from Nebraska and Kentucky and brisket from Arizona, according to Huggins.
With the numbers
400,000 servings
Operation BBQ Relief’s supply of bread has been on the road since last week.
100,000 servings
The amount of vegetables that Operation BBQ Relief had on the road last week.
150,000 servings
The amount of protein Operation BBQ Relief had on the road last week.
100,000 meals
The amount of food the NGO eventually hopes to provide each day after scaling up from 60,000 to 80,000 a day.
1 million
The total number of meals Operation BBQ Relief aims to distribute in Florida after Hurricane Ian is the nonprofit’s largest disaster response to date.
Huggins, who lives in Dallas, is a freight broker by day. But as director of logistics and transportation for Operation BBQ Relief, he’s shifting his focus from building supply shipments to food and produce.
“I have products all over the country that we buy from vendors and the vendors donate to us,” he said. “Our transportation costs could, from time to time, [during] these damages exceed $150,000.”
That’s where the American Logistics Aid Network and its executive director, Kathy Fulton, stepped in to help. Huggins and Fulton work together to coordinate the loads to be transported, and Fulton works with network partners to transport loads at no cost to Operation BBQ Relief.
Building bridges and flight
The requests from Operation BBQ Relief and other nonprofits to the American Logistics Aid Network vary, but the largest by far is transportation, ranging from LTL to full truckload shipments, Fulton said.
“We’re right there in the middle between all the different groups, and we’re helping push information and resources to where they’re needed and trying to build bridges so that this network can exist without us,” Fulton said.
In addition to working with the trucking industry, Operation BBQ Relief has partnered with AirDrop featureTexas nonprofit to fly food to Fort Myers, Sanibel Island and other areas cut off by flooding.
“We send meals to a lot of different counties,” said Joey Rusek, Operation BBQ Relief’s chief operating officer. “We threw about 20,000 meals in total over three days with them.”
“It couldn’t have happened at a better time”
Lines of cars greeted the Operation BBQ Relief meal donation as more than half of Charlotte County residents were without power, county spokesman Brian Gleason said.
“These people didn’t have a hot meal unless they cooked it on their grill, if it’s still there from last week,” Gleason said. “Their food in the fridge has been spoiled for a long time. … It’s a really great program, and it couldn’t happen at a better time, as people are really struggling.”
In the back of his trailer Friday morning, Myerly maneuvered a pallet jack under his latest haul, a shipment of Del Monte canned beans, and steered it toward the waiting forklift of fellow volunteer Forrest Parks.
That night, he was back on the road in Alabama to meet another driver and pick up a load of corn.