After tough winter conditions of heavy snow and ice in February, many Kentuckians were excited to see warmer weather in March. But with warmer weather came rapidly melting snow and ice, as well as huge rainfalls that caused major flooding in Eastern Kentucky.
One community hit particularly hard was Irvine, a neighboring town to our Richmond store, where rising water from the Kentucky River caused severe damage to homes and businesses. Our Richmond store jumped into action by reaching out to God’s Outreach Madison County Food Bank. The store has developed close ties to God’s Outreach after working with them as a food pantry partner for the Meijer Simply Give hunger relief program.
“God’s Outreach has been a great partner to us since we opened here and we knew that they would be acting quickly to serve the community as this emergency situation unfolded,” Richmond Meijer Store Director Bill Thompson said. “We knew they work closely with not only our area, but also Irvine, so they were ready to use their existing network to really help people on the ground.”
Our store helped them secure the large quantities of bottled water, dry goods and canned food they needed to provide immediate relief to those affected by the flooding. The store also worked with our corporate office to ship in an additional $6,300 in bottled water, cleaning supplies and paper towels to be donated to the clean-up effort.
“We’re glad to make this a little easier for the victims of the flooding,” Bill said. “Anything we could do to help them get through this difficult time, on top of the difficulties of the past year, we were happy to do.”