BRADENTON, Fla. — Delayed but not deterred.
That would be a good way to describe how Christie Castro is feeling right now.
“The stories that were coming in were horrible and devastating and very Katrina-like,” she said.
Castro was up until midnight on Sunday watching the news reports of Hurricane Ida’s arrival on the Louisiana coast. She feverishly sent messages on Facebook to friends in Lakewood Ranch and surrounding areas about helping deliver relief supplies after the storm had passed.
The community responded in a big way.
“All in all, we will have two, possibly three UHauls. Over $7,000 in cash,” said Castro, who works for HomeWell Care Services and has lived in Florida for eight years.
The hope was to deliver as many relief items as possible to Hurricane-battered Louisiana on Tuesday. Instead, locals in Houma told Castro and others to hold off. The damage was so vast and overwhelming, it was unlikely military and relief crews in the area would have allowed them to enter the state.
“It’s so heartbreaking to see the people that we love suffering. So many people lost everything,” said Bradenton's Cassidy Junot, who lived in Houma, near New Orleans, during Hurricane Katrina in 2005. “It’s just really hard.”
The delay actually helped a bit. It gave Junot, Castro, and others a few extra days to gather more of the much-needed supplies. Ali St. Paul, another Louisiana native now living in Florida, helped organized supply drives.
“Some people have just the clothes on their backs,” she said.
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St. Paul is from New Orleans. She smiled when looking at the mostly-full UHaul parked behind Discovery Commons in Bradenton Thursday afternoon. It was stuffed with diapers, water bottles, canned goods, even portable air conditioning units.
“They already are so appreciative, the people that we’ve been able to contact,” said St. Paul. “(It’s) just complete devastation. People don’t know where they’re going to go.”
The relief efforts were a collaboration among many healthcare workers and assisted living facilities across the West Florida coast. Junot has been answering phone calls all week and coordinating pickups. Same for Castro.
“When Discovery Commons stepped up and volunteered to pay the cost of the UHaul to get it to Louisiana it enabled us to be able to help with thousands of more dollars in supplies,” said Castro. “It takes a village, and we all are that village in this community.”
The new plan, as of Thursday, is to caravan to Covington, La. and meet up with local officials who have been authorized to deliver packages like the ones coming from Castro in Florida. Even assisted living facilities have been helping out with collections.
“Before you know it, we started filling a box. One box became three boxes. Three boxes became a trip to the local store to get 30 cases of water,” said Lisa Britt-Smith, who works at Cypress Springs, a senior community in Lakewood Ranch. “I bet we probably had between 20-30 people donate.”
Britt-Smith even brought diapers donated from people in her neighborhood.
Reports from Louisiana reveal that people there are living without power and gas after the Category 4 storm came through. Ida continued up the country and caused more issues – like major flooding in Pennsylvania on Wednesday.
All these helpful Floridians can do now is try to pack as much as they can into those rented UHaul trucks and get to the people suffering as fast as possible.
“People are finding their roofs blocks away from their homes,” said St. Paul. “It tears your heart out.”
If you'd like to help financially, you can support the mission here:
PayPal: cassidyjkramer@gmail.com
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Junot says she's "saving all the receipts" for those who are wary of where their donations are going or how they're being spent.