By Drew Johnson
I am writing this as we are coming out of the first big snowstorm of the winter. As the reader undoubtedly knows, we had a nasty blizzard with subzero temperatures in the middle of January. Personally, I was not ready. I knew that snow was coming, and I thought I had enough food in the house, but just one day past our family’s normal shopping day my wife was cooking chicken soup with back-of-the-freezer chicken necks and lasagna noodles.
The weather caught many of our clients unprepared as well. Although our office was closed on the snowiest of the days (we follow Vicksburg Schools), we were monitoring our voicemails remotely and talked to many people who were without heat and/or food with no way of getting in or out.
This was a particularly bad weekend for a snowstorm to hit our clients. You might not know it, but Indiana Michigan Power likes to schedule all of their disconnection notices for the same day or two of the month—in January, of course, the disconnections were all scheduled for the weekend of the snowstorm, leaving many of our clients with the prospect of losing power just at the point when they could least afford to. We worked hard the week before the storm to make sure that everyone we talked to would be safe and have electricity.
As often happens in times of crisis, once the snow hit the community came together. Over the weekend we worked with Adult Protective Services, Vicksburg Schools, and Vicksburg Public Safety—Jim Mallery had called me beforehand let me know they were available to check on people—to respond to people in need and get eyes on seniors who live alone far out in the country. We delivered food to seniors who were snowed in on Monday and Tuesday and decided to open our pantry on Wednesday even though our office was closed. By Thursday, the snow had mostly passed and it was much warmer (15 degrees!).
Today, we are following up with people who had longer-term problems come out of the weekend—giving resources to people whose pipes froze and setting up daily food deliveries for seniors who need to be checked on over the next few weeks. We’ll continue to work with people who had trouble to try to get them in safer and more stable housing.
Hopefully we can get back to normal soon—it looks like it will be 40 next week!
Drew Johnson lives in Kalamazoo and is the Director at South County Community Services. He has a small quarter-acre homestead with chickens, bees, and hops (and more!), a wonderful wife, and three energetic children. He can be reached at 649-2901 or ajohnson@southcountycs.com
For more information on South County Community Services, please check out our Facebook at facebook.com/southcountycs or our website: southcountycs.com.
