‘It’s a Bucket Brigade on a Five-Alarm Fire.’ Food Banks Struggle to Keep Up With Skyrocketing Demand

In a matter of five months, 47-year-old Aquanna Quarles saw her personal finances implode. In December, she totaled her car. In February, the car she replaced the totaled one with was stolen. And in early March, her kitchen flooded, destroying the food in her cabinets and the small appliances on top of them. Quarles remembers thinking, “Oh my God, like what else could go wrong?” Then the novel coronavirus began spreading across the United States. In mid-March, the state of Ohio, where Quarles lives, began issuing stay-at-home orders, shuttering shops and businesses, and by the end of the month, the rest of the country had followed suit, pushing millions of Americans out of work. Quarles, who works for a home health care company doing both office work and caring for elderly and disabled individuals, saw her hours—and weekly earnings—cut in half. In April, for the first time in her life, Quarles felt she had no choice but to lean on a food bank to make ends meet. “This was really my first time ever doing it,” Quarles says of her decision to seek assistance from a food charity. “Because if I don’t need it, I’m not gonna go. You know what I mean? But I needed it.” On April 21, Quarles lined up in her car with thousands of other Ohioans in the parking lot of Wright State University’s football stadium where Dayton’s Foodbank, Inc. had set up an emergency drive-thru food distribution site. On that day alone, th...
Source: TIME: Health - Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Tags: Uncategorized COVID-19 Source Type: news