NEW ORLEANS — Howie Kaplan was sitting inside his bar Monday morning, celebrating with friends that Hurricane Ida’s wrath wasn’t nearly as catastrophic …
NEW ORLEANS — Howie Kaplan was sitting inside his bar Monday morning, celebrating with friends that Hurricane Ida’s wrath wasn’t nearly as catastrophic as they’d all worried it’d be, when someone stopped in to ask if he’d be giving out food that afternoon. An operation he started at the beginning of the pandemic to feed thousands throughout the city had started to slow down in the past couple of weeks, as New Orleans boasted an abnormally high vaccination rate for Louisiana and more and more service industry workers were able to get back to work. But with the city’s electrical grid ruined by the storm, Kaplan realized it was time to ramp back up. There were roughly 1 million of his neighbors without power and thus without a means to prepare food. « We can figure it out, » he recalled thinking. Through the pandemic, more than just feeding people, the Howlin’ Wolf has also hosted vaccine clinics and diaper drives. « We’ve literally become a community center by accident, » Kaplan said. There was no reason to stop the trend now, so he brought his grill from home and some friends started showing up to donate the contents of their freezers. Volunteers from various nonprofits quickly formed an assembly line. Two of the beer companies Kaplan works with donated refrigerated trucks. By Saturday morning, about 15,000 meals had been given out to front line workers, first responders and to the city’s « culture bearers — just everyone who makes New Orleans, New Orleans, » Kaplan said.
