CEDAR KEY — On Saturday, two days on from devastating winds churning up a record-breaking storm surge, the cavalry started arriving on Cedar Key, bearing hot meals for the powerless.
The state, as part of its disaster planning, contracts with Mercy Chefs, based in Portsmouth, Va. And on their first day on the ground in Cedar Key, founder Ann LeBlanc expects her organization will have delivered more than 10,000 hot meals to zones Hurricane Helene cut off from electricity. Five hundred were brought Saturday to Cedar Key, one of the state’s hardest-hit towns.
Preparations to mobilize start almost as soon as a named storm appears on the National Hurricane Center’s website.
“We’re not only chefs, we’re storm chasers,” LeBlanc said, as she slid behind the wheel of an SUV to begin pacing around Cedar Key’s battered streets.
Delivered in white clamshell containers, island residents here were offered jambalaya, spiced carrots and a biscuit. The meal was made in Newberry and then driven in. The organization has a mobile kitchen that’s able to operate in powerless places. But power was close enough to assemble the meals there, LeBlanc said.
A load of them were left at the First Baptist Church of Cedar Key. But anyone spotted roaming the street was proffered one by LeBlanc, wearing a shirt with her organization’s logo and trailed by a marketing crew filming her street mission.
Sonya Jurdy, 87, was on the receiving end of one. After giving her guests a tour of her home’s ruined stairs that she had just paid someone to replace the day before Helene arrived, the retired schoolteacher and real estate agent sat down with a view of the gulf and ate with gusto. She pronounced it delicious.
LeBlanc hopped back into her SUV and declared, “I love it when people say it’s good.”
Mercy Chefs pack up and leave as soon as a community’s power comes back on, LeBlanc said.
“When grocery stores and restaurants are open and operating, it actually does damage to a community trying to rebuild if we interfere with free meals,” LeBlanc said. “We try to help residents get back to normal.”
Anne Geggis is the insurance reporter at The Palm Beach Post, part of the USA TODAY Florida Network. You can reach her at [email protected]. Help support our journalism. Subscribe today.
This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Post: Va.-based mobile kitchen delivers food to Cedar Key residents
