One woman’s “astonished” account of her experience with Red Cross employees at a Texas airport is being widely shared on Facebook.
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A woman who identifies herself as Lindsey Scott says she went to bring food — “400 warm hamburgers,” specifically — to Hurricane Harvey evacuees, but was “accosted and berated” by Red Cross workers at Jack Brooks airport, near Port Arthur.
Scott adds that she only began to arrange for food donations after getting to the airport at 6:30 that morning and finding that “we had no food to serve the 100s of evacuees who had sat on a bus all night and some who had not eaten in 24 hours,” nor food and formula for infants.
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Things got worse, she said, when donations of supplies and other hard goods came in. Scott claims that Red Cross workers “tried to prevent us from sharing OUR donations (contributed by our community for our community and surrounding areas)” and sought to have those donations sent to a Red Cross warehouse before redistributing.
“While we refused to turn away anyone who came on foot or by other means (evacuee or not) or any other church, group, or organization asking for supplies…the Red Cross tried to prevent us from sharing OUR donations,” she writes.
Scott says that they still managed to disburse the food and donations to people who needed them. She concluded by praising her state for their response, writing “One thing I learned from this is THANK GOD I’m from TEXAS… [W]hen the shit hits the fan, our husbands, brothers, dads, uncles, cousins, sons, and all the other men we know put on their boots, waders and get their boats and trucks and go to work!”
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