The Highlands Emergency Council food pantry remains open following Hurricane Helene, but is running low on stock.
The MANNA Food Bank’s Asheville headquarters is flooded and out of operation for the time being after the devastation from Hurricane Helene last week. In Highlands, that means the Highlands Emergency Council is facing the possibility of running out of food.
“Our shelves are almost empty now because we expected a truck last Friday and it didn’t come, and so we will be running out of food within days,” said council president Marie Johnson on Monday afternoon.
Johnson said they could use help from the community wherever possible.
“If you have extra stuff, if you want to order stuff from Sam’s to be delivered, or Amazon, we’re mostly in need of food that’s easily heated up, ready-made soup, ravioli. Things people can cook on the gas top, toilet paper, garbage bags, any of those items people are going to need,” Johnson said.
She said the Emergency Council was already seeing its resources depleted as residents came to stock up on food while the power was out over the weekend.
“We’re pretty much the last resort for people to come, so we are very getting low on our shelves,” she said.
Johnson said the Emergency Council was holding up as well as could be, despite the setbacks.
“We’re on generators, we were able to keep two freezers going where the rest of our meat’s stored, that will run out in a matter of days,” she said. “We didn’t suffer too much damage to the building, but we know some neighbors that got really bad.”
She described a steady trickle of people coming in for food and supplies, and said it was probably a little more than usual but not a dramatic change.
MANNA, in a press release, said it was running a drive for donations to distribute out to the Western North Carolina community. They said they were “accepting specific food, water, and supply donations from corporations, grocery stores, vendors, and individuals with extra resources to give.”
Donations can be taken to 570 Brevard Road in Asheville between 8 a.m. and 12 p.m. until Saturday. Locally, donations can be dropped off at the Emergency Council or at Cashiers Baptist Church, which is serving as an aid station in Jackson County.
“We are so grateful to everyone who has reached out wanting to help after our communities have been so severely affected by the storm,” said Claire Neal, CEO of MANNA FoodBank. “Now we are thrilled to have a distribution site, thanks to the incredible staff at NC Department of Agriculture who are providing the WNC Farmers Market, to help us get much-needed resources out to our neighbors in need.”
At Bryson’s Food Store in town, the power was back on as of Tuesday, but the shelves were light and many were totally empty. Store manager Terry Watson, said they would be “back to real business” within a few days.