BELLEVUE, Neb.– The Bellevue Food Pantry lost power and all its perishables but community donated items to fill the freezers within just hours of the pantry asking for help.
- The pantry posted on Facebook asking for donations following the outage
- Hundreds of pounds of food was donated within hours of the post
- The food is going out of the pantry fast to support those who also lost food due to the outages
BROADCAST TRANSCRIPT:
Within hours the Bellevue Food Pantry freezers went from this to this
Like many others the food pantry lost all its perishable food during the power outages but the community came together to fill its freezers back up
The food pantry went over two days without power and all its food had to be removed. The pantry was able to donate its frozen and refrigerated food to cooling centers in the area during the outage, so the food didn't go to waste but by Monday all the freezers were empty.
The food pantry posted on Facebook asking for urgent donations and Deanna Wagner, manager of the food pantry says donations started coming in within 30 minutes and within hours freezers were filled.
"We knew the Bellevue community would step up, they always do,” Wagner said, “Whenever we ask for something we have people who respond right away, and this time was no different. It means just the world to us to be able to know the community can help us so we can help everybody."
The donations that came in are going right back out to help neighbors refill their own freezers after the power outage.
Aaron Bowen, executive director says this is why these donations were so important to the pantry.
"Having another expense, having to be displaced from your home, losing valuable food they're going to come here first so we have to make sure we have enough for them, so our volunteers and community are super creative with putting things together and making it work," Bowen said.
Aaron says he’s never surprised by the community's generosity when it comes to helping the pantry, but it still means a lot to him.
"It always fills our heart when it comes through, and it comes through at just the right time," Bowen said.
The donations came from community members, businesses and some organizations around Bellevue.
The food pantry is seeing larger numbers of people due to the recent outage and expect August to be a busy month.
