EDINBURG — Stuart Haniff, CEO of the Food Bank of the Rio Grande Valley, arrived at Bert Ogden Arena at 4:30 a.m. Wednesday morning.
When asked if he’d had an opportunity to rest ahead of Wednesday’s mass emergency pantry drive-thru, he replied, “I’ve been awake since 2019.”
“We’ve got the adrenaline of knowing that these folks don’t have to go to bed hungry tonight,” Haniff said as cars began snaking through the arena’s parking lot to fill the eight distribution lanes. “That’s the greatest adrenaline, or motivator, that you can imagine.”
Thousands of vehicles lined up along the frontage road, Trenton Road, South Veterans Boulevard, and Alberta Road awaiting their chance to collect the nearly 61 pounds of food distributed to each family. The demand was such that the distribution at the arena created traffic jams and delays.
“When you have a lot of people and vehicular traffic, you are going to run into traffic running a lot slower than normal,” Edinburg police Lt. Rey Sepulveda said. “For the most part, I think everything went well. I don’t think we had any traffic accidents — which is a plus. All we asked for was patience. It was a very big number of people who came out today.”
Wednesday’s event was one of the food bank’s largest distributions in recent memory, and the timing could not have been better.
“We realize so many of our families have been impacted and destabilized by the winter storm, on top of COVID, so we’re working to make sure that we can help support them and get them back up and running,” Haniff said. “Many of the families here in the Valley have lost as a result of the power outages the little or small amounts of food that they had on hand.”
Last week’s winter storm left hundreds of thousands of residents without power in the Valley, many for as long as an entire week, resulting in large-scale food loss as people needed to toss food from their refrigerators and freezers.
Sisters Maricela Perales and Cynthia Gonzalez of McAllen were among those without power last week. They said the loss of their food forced them to participate in the distribution, for their first time — something they said they never imagined they would do.
“It was a rude awakening for us because we never prepared for this,” Perales said. “We should’ve prepared. This should never happen again.”
“It should’ve never happened, period,” Gonzalez added.
Haniff said he understood the immense need being felt by the community as a result of last week’s weather.
“It’s huge right now because our Valley is still recovering and dealing with COVID-19,” Haniff said. “On top of that, now we have the challenge of the winter storm where the economic challenges are even more exacerbated because people have lost time at work, they’ve lost power, they’ve lost food, they’ve lost water — there’s been a shortage here in the Valley. So we’re just trying to make people whole and bring them back up to at least a functioning level.
“That’s why we’ve launched this mass distribution today. We’re stepping up our efforts as the challenges have risen.”
The distribution had over 150 volunteers on-hand to help load the food into the trunks of vehicles. The volunteers included representatives from H-E-B, Bert Ogden dealerships, L&F Distributors, Lone Star National Bank, Jack in the Box, UTRGV, and members of the National Guard, among many others.
Haniff said the food bank asked the city of Edinburg to allow vehicles to begin lining up at 7 a.m. Wednesday, but cars began lining up as early as 11 p.m. Tuesday.
“It just indicates the great need that we have,” Haniff said. “People can’t wait. They were here in their cars overnight.”
The last mass food distribution was held on June 9, 2020, at H-E-B Park, and the food bank served 3,000 families. The average food distributions regularly serve 500 families. Wednesday’s distribution served five-times that amount.
The food included bags of canned beans, fruit and vegetables, a box of produce, a whole chicken, a box of apples, a box of grape tomatoes, two packages of chicken enchilada soup mix, as well as a 24-pack of water and some face masks.
“We realized that this is the time for it because more people than ever are in need,” Haniff said.
While Wednesday’s distribution was beneficial for many who had lost food as a result of the winter weather, Haniff explained the event had been planned for about two weeks. It was simply a matter of good timing, he said.
“The cost of something like this is phenomenal — almost $400,000,” Haniff said. “It’s a total community effort. We worked with the city of Edinburg, Bert Ogden Arena, our wonderful sponsors and our generous partners. It’s a logistical masterpiece to orchestrate all these cars going in and out seamlessly and quickly, efficiently.”
Anyone willing to donate to the Food Bank of the Rio Grande Valley should visit their website, www.foodbankrgv.com, or text COLD21 to 44-321.
