FFTP and CEPUDO Rush Aid to Honduras Fire Victims
COCONUT CREEK, Fla. (Oct. 2, 2021) Longtime Food For The Poor partner CEPUDO is responding to help those hurt and misplaced by a massive fire in the small community of Cayo Guanaja/Bonacca in the Bay Islands of Honduras. The charity partners sent emergency supplies by airfreight and larger items will follow by boat.
“The whole cay is on fire,” said CEPUDO President Linda Coello, in an urgent WhatsApp message to Food For The Poor colleagues on Saturday morning. “We are now going to the warehouse, we are going to work all day. We already have some trucks that are going to help us take the things to the airport and to the port, so we can send them.
“I’m devastated,” she said. “Those houses are so close together, and the people don’t have any place to go but the ocean.”
The fire was reported by a news agency to be started by a burning candle in one of the houses built close together in the community.
Emergency response supplies include generators, stoves, cots, tarps, blankets, masks and hand sanitizer gel. Food For The Poor prepositions emergency disaster kits in the countries it serves and those are being deployed.
Coello said that medicine for burns and food that did not have to be cooked would be urgently needed, as well as shelter for the families displaced from homes destroyed by the fire. More than 30 families were said to have lost their homes and everything in them.
The fire was brought under control midday, local agencies in Honduras reported.
At the same time, a corps of volunteers arrived at the CEPUDO warehouse in San Pedro Sula to package food kits, clothing and shoes, and emergency response kits.
Food For The Poor, one of the largest international relief and development organizations in the nation, does much more than feed millions of hungry children and families living in poverty primarily in 17 countries of the Caribbean and Latin America. This interdenominational Christian ministry provides emergency relief assistance, clean water, medicine, educational materials, homes, support for vulnerable children, care for the aged, skills training and micro-enterprise development assistance. For more information, please visit www.FoodForThePoor.org.
Kathy Skipper
Director of Public Relations
954-427-2222 x 6614
[email protected]