Second Harvest Food Bank of East Tennessee is providing vital emergency food to the 14,000 residents and tourists that were evacuated during the wildfires in the Great Smoky Mountains that surround Sevier County and the town of Gatlinburg and Pigeon Forge.
Second Harvest Food Bank of East Tennessee continues to respond to the needs of the local community who have lost their homes due to the wildfires and cannot provide food for themselves and their families.
Financial support will allow Second Harvest Food Bank of East Tennessee to provide extended relief to Sevier County in addition to the 2 million pounds of food that we provide on an annual basis in that area. We will distribute the food to our network of partner agencies that can help us reach people throughout the community that are in critical need of food and water immediately following the fire disaster and during the clean up period.
It will take many months to clean up the 15,000 acres that the raging wildfires burned. For some families, jobs have been lost because of damaged workplaces, meaning lost wages needed for food, others will struggle through replacing what was lost with no place to live. Second Harvest Food Bank of East Tennessee is a member of Feeding America, which provides a highly effective way to quickly direct large quantities of food to those in need after a disaster.
