Tampa, FL (October 10, 2024) – As the sun broke through on Thursday morning the path of Hurricane Milton could be seen after its late-night track across the state. Although the initial impact of the storm came ashore on the west coast of Florida, the wake of its destruction can be seen up and down the coast and all the way to the east coast of Florida.
Trees down, flooded streets and neigborhoods that are inaccessible, and wide range power outages can be found everywhere. In addition, tornadoes spawned up in areas as far as St. Lucie, Indian River and Palm Beach Counties on the east coast that caused massive destruction and casualties far from the hurricane impact zone.
Reports from across the state both internally and externally confirm that this storm could be the most damaging storm in Florida’s history, and Salvation Army crews have begun the task of assessing damages in their communities and coordinating with their local Emergency Operation Centers (EOC) to provide aid where needed.
The Salvation Army’s Florida Base Camp, located in Lakeland, Florida with its Incident Management Team was up early Thursday morning with eight mobile feeding units fanning out in both Polk and Hillsborough Counties prepared to provide meals to those impacted.
Similar feeding activities are beginning to take place throughout the state as Salvation Army personnel began to respond not only to serve the needs in their local community but will be called upon to travel to other areas in the state to provide assistance.
Some efforts even began the day before as The Salvation Army teams filled request to feed at evacuation shelters. Major Ken Chapman, Area Commander for Orange and Osceola Counties, had been serving Wednesday night and was out again on Thursday morning having served over fifteen hundred meals in the last twenty-four hours.
With The Salvation Army’s network across the country, Disaster Relief Teams from across the country and Canada are being mobilized to assist in this response. Thirty canteens are now ready to deploy with more on the way to help support this monumental effort.
Steven Hartsook, The Salvation Army Florida Division Emergency Disaster Services Director said, “While we have equipment and people here in Florida who are experienced in disaster service delivery, we realize that this response may be more than we can ever have imagined and the help that we get from our friends throughout the country will be invaluable in helping us.”
