A Riverside-based nonprofit that supplies free gasoline to victims of natural disasters has more than a dozen volunteers in Houston, working day and night to distribute gas to power cars, trucks, generators and other equipment in areas impacted by Hurricane Harvey, but the volunteer effort is in need of funds to keep going, a spokesman said Friday.
“First responders are in such dire need of fuel, they’re providing us with police escorts to places,” said Ted Honcharik with the Fuel Relief Fund.
“We’re trying to get our product out as rapidly as possible,” he told City News Service. “There’s a tremendous need for fuel. Bridges are down. People are isolated and in great need. We’re delivering fuel everywhere we can in the Houston market.”
Honcharik said his volunteer team arrived in Rockport, Texas, on Tuesday to begin distributing gasoline from three tanker trucks. Since then, more than 8,000 gallons of petrol has been distributed, in addition to 1,000 gallons of diesel. Fuel Relief Fund volunteers have also filled 500 individual containers with one to five gallons of gas to enable recipients to power portable generators.
“We’re trying to get into the most devastated areas,” Honcharik said. “We’re all sleeping in cars and trucks. A few organizations are going to assist us with other arrangements. We could be down here weeks. It depends on how much and how many people contribute to our effort.”
He told CNS that, with multiple oil refineries down because of flooding, fuel distribution has slowed to a trickle throughout the Houston metropolitan area.
“They’re having inventory problems,” Honcharik said. “The fuel will eventually start replenishing here, but the timing is difficult to gauge.”
He said the first-hand accounts and broadcast images of the hurricane’s aftermath don’t quite “capture” the breadth of the catastrophe.
“It’s not something I can put into words,” Honcharik said.
The Fuel Relief Fund sent teams to assist with disaster aid immediately following the devastating earthquake in Ecuador in 2016, the Nepal earthquake of 2015, as well as the catastrophic quakes in Haiti and Japan in 2010 and 2011, respectively. Volunteers were also involved in relief missions days after the monster typhoon that struck the Philippines in 2013.
In some cases, volunteers distribute kerosene for individual portable stoves, and other times provide diesel for international charities to operate trucks in heavily impacted areas.
Donations to the Fuel Relief Fund can be made at http://fuelrelieffund.org/ .
–City News Service