Reporting by Rebecca Loroff, Appleton Post-Crescent / Appleton Post-Crescent
On a bright, sunny day around noon, a group of a dozen volunteers set up several pop-up tents, stacks of bottled water, and tables of food and hygiene supplies in the parking lot at Heckrodt Wetland Reserve, 1265 Plank Road.
As of July 29, the trails at the reserve were still cleaning up from a July 27 tornado that left a path of devastation through the Fox Cities. Still, as Heckrodt naturalist and educator Andrea Bierbrauer set up a food station, she said she was excited to help Menasha residents: “Anything the community needs, we step up.”
The deployment to the park is meant to get supplies where they’re needed the most. In the days following the tornado, hundreds of volunteers, water bottle packs, food boxes — as well as hundreds of thousands of dollars — have poured in.
Volunteers deliver food, water and help to Menasha residents
While Appleton homes also saw damage and lost power in the storm, the City of Menasha and the Village of Fox Crossing were the hardest-hit. In Menasha, hundreds were still without power and under a boil water advisory as of July 29. Some roads were also still hard to navigate in the city due to storm damage.
Because of those needs, Feeding America volunteers and members of city government distributed food near Smith Park, Jefferson Park and Heckrodt, bringing bottled water and 300 boxes of food meant to eat straight from the package, according to Feeding America Eastern Wisconsin communications director Cameron Wengrzyn.
While he was in Menasha Tuesday, Wengrzyn heard some residents say they would try to cook canned soup over a backyard campfire. Instead, the boxes handed out Wednesday contained foods like packaged beef and cheese sticks, applesauce pouches and tortillas. In the days to come, Feeding America plans to add donated produce, like apples and bananas, that can be eaten straight off the shelf.
Meanwhile, about a thousand volunteers had deployed to affected areas through Volunteer Fox Cities as of Wednesday, said the organization’s chief executive officer Carolyn Desrosiers. Estimating how much food, water and personal protective equipment they’ve gathered was harder, she said, as the supplies go out the door as soon as they come in. She believed hundreds of water bottle packs alone had come through the doors at the aid station, which has been set up at the University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh Fox Cities campus since July 28.
The volunteers come from many walks of life. Stef Fude, an advisor to the Appleton East High School DECA Club, helped her high school students set up a volunteer opportunity for tornado cleanup. She expected a dozen students to help remove trees and branches from Appleton neighborhoods July 29. Instead, she got 40.
“It was all student-driven,” she said. “They saw what’s going on and they asked to help.”
Through the week, Volunteer Fox Cities has urged patience and asked individual people to volunteer through the group, as they’ve had an outpouring of support from people looking to help.
As communities clean up, organization leaders settle for the long haul
Community Foundation president Curt Detjen said the Community Foundation’s tornado recovery fund, launched Tuesday in conjunction with the United Way of the Fox Valley and the Community Foundation of Oshkosh, had already reached $500,000 as of Wednesday.
Besides the Community Foundation fund, Feeding America is also asking for monetary donations to continue giving food boxes to Menasha residents. Other organizations all over the Fox Cities are holding benefits and fundraisers.
“The efforts from all of our units of government and public safety are just incredible. The long hours, the neighbors helping neighbors — it’s the sign of a community that really cares,” Detjen said.
But as streets are cleaned and power is restored, volunteer leaders expect full recovery to take longer. Feeding America plans to stay in Menasha for the foreseeable future, Wengrzyn said. Detjen also said that the fundraiser is meant to support both short-term and long-term needs. Desrosiers said while her organization is taking things day by day, they plan to be at the UWO Fox Cities campus Thursday and likely longer than that.
“This is a very tight-knit community,” Detjen said. “Everybody (here) knows somebody who has been directly impacted, seen the pictures and heard the stories.” But, he added, “this is a time when the community needs to come together, and we are.”
Rebecca Loroff is an education reporter for the USA TODAY NETWORK-Wisconsin. She welcomes story tips and feedback. Contact her at rloroff@gannett.com.
This article originally appeared on Appleton Post-Crescent: Community rallies to support tornado recovery through food and aid
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