Warehouse Employee Delivers Supplies from Shreveport to Panama City
Ryan Stroud previously served in the Army and was still pretty new to his position with our Shreveport branch warehouse when Hurricane Michael hit.
Living in Panama City, Ryan's in-laws thankfully didn't suffer major damage - but tens of thousands did. So, Ryan used his day of service (a paid community service/stewardship day offered to every IES employee), and joined by his wife, took a long weekend to deliver supplies and offer assistance and deliver supplies that the IES team, who wanted to help out, rallied to gather.
See below for photos, and some of what Ryan encountered while in Panama City...
Below are just a few of the initial (and lasting) impressions Ryan shared...
- Even after seeing reports on TV and Facebook, the devastation was "way worse in person."
- The storm in fact "brought the community together" out of necessity.
- Although his in-laws were largely spared, his wife's grandmother lost her roof, and the house across the street from her is gone.
- She donated her homemade salsa, plus a great deal of what she had canned.
- Much of the homemade and homegrown foods she donated were delivered to the linemen working to restore power, who often passed the food on to people in the community.
- Down the street, an 84-year-old man survived by clinging to a toilet for 3 hours as his house was blown away.
- Most stayed behind only because it was too late to leave by the time it became clear how severe the hurricane was going to be.
The linemen are truly "first responders" themselves - even arriving before fire and EMS, etc.
- They were "sleeping in cattle trailers on cots stacked three high."
- "There were 74 men in one trailer."
- The flu was going around so many slept under their trucks, etc.
- Many traveled in from places like Columbus, Ohio.
- At the time, it was "110 degrees every day, and the trees were down." The intense heat made the recovery process that much harder...
