Volunteers from the Chesapeake, Potomac, and the Allegheny East Conference joined together in Coatesville, Pennsylvania to pack flood buckets for the Hurricane Maria survivors in the Islands. Along with the Rotary, YMCA, and the local African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church, they prepared a total of 1,616 super-packed buckets of supplies for household cleaning, dishes and laundry including heavy duty trash bags, mask, gloves, clotheslines, clothespins, and etc.
The prepared flood buckets were then taken to Baltimore and placed on a rail to Miami. The Inter-American Division retrieved them and placed them on smaller vessels to be shipped to the Islands based on assessments of volunteers on the various Islands. Before the buckets were ready for delivery, they were opened and thoroughly inspected. The volunteers had to go through a strenuous task of sorting packed buckets that had bleach in order to remove them since they made the load hazardous. They were able to retrieve 90 bottles of bleach. Forklifts and drivers were also donated by the Columbia Union Conference.
The NAD ACS DR Director, W. Derrick Lea, expressed his gratitude and appreciation to the Columbia Union ACS DR Teams for connecting with the Inter-American Division and carrying out this project in a commendable fashion.
