ORANGE COUNTY, Fla. — As communities continue to recover from Hurricane Ian, Second Harvest Food Bank is working to make sure people don’t go hungry.
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Nearly every home in the Orlo Vista area suffered extensive flooding from the hurricane.
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The Hiromboli family says that flooding is the reason they landed in the Second Harvest food distribution line Tuesday.
“The hurricane hit us and damaged a lot of things in the house, and we’re left without food,” Hiromboli said.
The family says they only recently had the power at their home restored, but days without a working refrigerator and several inches of flood water inside meant all their food spoiled.
“It’s going to be a big help,” Hiromboli said of the food distribution. “We will see what they hand out to us so we can figure out what we need to buy later.”
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Second Harvest Food Pantry says demand for food help has risen consistently over the Summer.
Over the weekend, their food-finder website showed a spike in people looking for food.
“In Central Florida, on an average day, we have one in seven of our neighbors who are facing food insecurity,” Second Harvest Food Pantry Communications Manager Erika Spence said. “When you add in something like inflation, or a hurricane, unexpected expenses, the number of people reaching out for food assistance can rise pretty rapidly.”
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In response, the food bank says they’re using rainfall data and input from community leaders to decide where they should pop up their distribution sites, bringing food into communities that need it the most where people are still having access problems.
“We normally do about two distributions like this every day,” Spence said. “This week, we’re doing three, sometimes four of these types of mobile distributions.”
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