HAMMOND, Louisiana (Fort Wayne's NBC) - The job of restoring electricity and repairing damaged properties carries on along the Gulf Coast, one full week after the powerful storm hammered parts of Louisiana.
Providing hot meals to hurricane victims remains a challenge too.
Chris Wilson Jr. and three close family members traveled from Fort Wayne to the Gulf Coast late last week to try and help take care of that problem.
Wilson, who owns Lucille's Bar-B-Que Restaurant on Lima Road, has volunteered multiple times at natural disaster sites the past five years, cooking and serving meals to displaced families and first responders.
Wilson, along with his father and two brothers are working with Operation BBQ Relief, which since 2011 has served up about 9-million meals at the scenes of floods, tornadoes, hurricanes and fires.
This time, they are helping out in Hammond Louisiana, where Ida caused devastation.
Because of the conditions, food spoilages are a major problem and so the work to get food to those who've lost so much is a godsend for tens of thousands of storm victims.
"In a disaster like this they lose everything, the one thing they can depend on is getting a hot meal…It's hard work, long days, but at the end of the day, you're doing good, you're helping out complete strangers," Chris Wilson told us Monday in a Facetime conversation from Louisiana.
Back home, Wilson's wife Adrienne talked to us from Lucille's main dining area that is closed temporarily.
With three people gone to help with the hurricane, the business didn't have sufficient manpower to keep serving customers back in Fort Wayne.
The eating establishment shut down Thursday and stayed closed through Labor Day.
"We get through it for the most part, but this week-end we just had short staff, we figured no better time to give our staff a bit of a break than Labor Day week-end, so we just kind of put everything on hold," said Adrienne Wilson, who is Lucille's catering director.
The labor shortage impacting the economy across the country is making it very difficult for restaurants and other employers to hire enough workers.
The plan for Lucille's is to re-open Tuesday, when reinforcements are scheduled to return from their outreach in Louisiana.
The Link LonkSeptember 07, 2021 at 05:36AM
https://fortwaynesnbc.com/2021/09/06/lucilles-bbq-owner-humbled-by-chance-to-feed-disaster-victims-hit-hard-by-hurricane-ida/
Lucille's BBQ owner humbled by chance to feed disaster victims hit hard by Hurricane Ida - Fort Wayne's NBC
https://news.google.com/search?q=hard&hl=en-US&gl=US&ceid=US:en
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