Emergency Distribution

We received a call from a manager from the City of Phoenix Human Services/Senior Services Housing department on Tuesday morning. She described a situation that was the result of our recent monsoon storm. The residents of Marcos De Niza Housing community had lost power Sunday night and it did not come back on until Monday afternoon. The complex has 363 housing units with each home occupying 3-4 individuals. 75 percent of the residents are seniors or disabled. Due to the length of the power outage, they lost all of the food in their refrigerators and freezers. These folks already live on an extremely tight budget and to suffer this kind of loss makes a difficult situation even worse.

We were able to assemble volunteers to make enough emergency food boxes so every family would receive a supply of non perishable food to help replace what had to be thrown away. We were also able to supply each family with a $10 certificate to receive a box of frozen meats through our cash and carry program. Our volunteer service department was even able to get volunteers to join us at the distribution this morning to assist those who needed it in carrying the box back to their residence in the housing complex. It was a wonderful scene this morning on Pima Street in Central Phoenix as residents checked in and received their emergency boxes. The smiles of appreciation and thank you’s were in abundance.

While this type of large scale emergency response does not happen often, the team here at St Mary’s took it in stride and stepped up to meet the needs of our community. Keep in mind, during the month of June we distributed almost 15,000 food boxes though our emergency food box, emergency baby box and Bridges Reaching the Elderly and Disabled programs. The majority of these boxes are distributed by case workers from our partner agencies directly to families in crisis situations. The summer months can cause additional hardship due to school lunch programs being shut down and the pressure families feel from increased electric bills.