Two members of the Salvation Army of Indian River County are in Texas, getting meals out to Hurricane Harvey survivors.
Sebastian resident Brian Baker described southeast Texas after Hurricane Harvey as “a lot of chaos.”
“It’s hard to explain, ” Baker said. “People see it on TV, and unless you’ re here, you have no idea what these people are going through.”
The 46-year-old emergency disaster coordinator for the Salvation Army of Indian River County was called into action late Friday night to help with recovery efforts and left the next day, said Baker in a phone interview Thursday with TCPalm. He flew out of Melbourne, stopped in Atlanta and landed in Dallas, the main command center for the Salvation Army.
Saturday through Monday, Baker sent mobile kitchens, where meals are made, to different cities. The mobile kitchens are converted tractor-trailers with walk-in freezers and refrigerators and are capable of making thousands of meals at a time, said Elaine McNeal, the volunteer coordinator for the local Salvation Army.
Monday night, Baker went to Houston as the canteen coordinator in charge of full meals coming in from across the nation. The canteens, which are smaller versions of mobile kitchens, are converted delivery-like trucks that put out fewer meals than the mobile kitchens but can get into smaller neighborhoods, McNeal said.
The meals are given to survivors in shelters and some emergency personnel, Baker said. One lunch was cheeseburgers, fries and applesauce, and one dinner was beef brisket, corn, dinner rolls and Oreos, all with drinks.
The command centers are staggered throughout southeast Texas so the mobile kitchens don’ t have to drive five hours to get from one city to another, Baker said. His current command center is about 10 miles outside downtown Houston.
Baker and Lt. Jay Needham, the operations chief also from the Salvation Army of Indian River County, shifted gears Wednesday when they set up two 14-people mobile show units for medical professionals at the downtown Houston convention center.
They also brought in mobile sleeping quarters for the mobile kitchen staff working around the clock, he said.
With about 9,000 people in one Houston shelter and about 6,000 in another, Baker said, he’s seen people sleeping under overpasses.
“The water’s not going down, ” Baker said. “We’ re going to be here a long time.”
His mission is two weeks on and two weeks off “until the need is gone, ” Baker said. He works between 17 and 19 hours each day and then tries to sleep a few hours at his motel room that was booked before the storm.
He plans to leave Sept. 13 and spend two weeks at home with his wife and three children until he goes back to Texas.
“They know I love it, ” Baker said. “I love helping people. I get no better joy than helping people.”
Baker started working for the Salvation Army in 2004 — just a week before Florida’s epic hurricane season. Since then, he’s helped with natural disasters across the nation and beyond, including flooding in Louisiana, South Carolina and West Virginia, tornadoes in Alabama and Oklahoma and earthquakes in Haiti.
He was there to help after Hurricane Katrina in 2005, and he said this storm is worse because of the rising water.
“They’ ve never seen this much rain in history fall in this short period of time, ” Baker said. “This is one of the biggest disasters that I’ ve ever heard of.”
