For the majority of people around the globe who have not experienced a hurricane or other catastrophic weather event, the situation in the Gulf may be all too easy to forget. Here's a reminder of what folks in Louisiana and Texas are still dealing with: A coastline that extends for miles and miles, where nothing is left standing except a few studs where houses once stood. Envision docks where Gulf shrimp was once offloaded, now entirely gone save for a few pilings.
Gustav made landfall as a Category 2 storm in central Louisiana on Sept. 1, causing an estimated $2 billion to $10 billion in damages. Ike, also a Category 2 storm, made landfall south of Galveston, Texas, on Sept. 13, and brought between $6 billion and $16 billion in damages.
Now the region's shelters and hunger-relief organizations are overwhelmed with requests for nutritious food for the thousands of people who have returned home to find home has disappeared.
SeaShare desperately needs donations to help the relief efforts. The Bainbridge Island, Wash.-based agency, which distributes seafood to Feeding America (formerly America's Second Harvest), says 100 percent of donations will provide seafood directly to hurricane victims. All of the funds SeaShare receives will be matched up to $50,000, doubling the value of a donation. The agency is looking for donations of shelf-stable seafood products and cash contributions to pay for processing, packaging, storing and shipping seafood products to hurricane victims.
Within hours of the Hurricane Katrina crises in 2005, SeaShare led the seafood industry in a product donation drive that supplied more than 525,000 pounds of seafood for the Louisianans who had lost everything. The group hopes to do it again.
Feeding America reports that the Houston Food Bank needs 500,000 pounds of food a day for the next six weeks. To make a donation, call SeaShare at (206) 842-3609 or visit its Web site at www.seashare.org. Please do what you can to help the people in this region.
