Local Nonprofit Helps Needy in Haiti
By: Mitch Carr
Updated: January 13, 2010
Breedlove Foods packages more than a million servings of dehydrated food a day to be sent to needy countries. On Tuesday an earthquake rocked the country of Haiti. But almost no sooner had the buildings stopped shaking in Port-au-Prince, than dehydrated food was on the way from Lubbock, Texas.
David Fish is the CEO of Breedlove. He says the estimates he's hearing say that as many as 100,000 people may be dead.
"Right now they're just saying we need help," Fish said. The Lubbock-based nonprofit already has 500,000 servings of food on trucks and ready to go to Haiti as soon as aid workers figure out how to get the food into the country and to the people who need it most.
"There's going to need to be a very significant response in the humanitarian community to meet the needs of these people," Fish said.
Fish compares this crisis to the asian tsunami that hit in late 2004. He says they can't be sure what Haiti will need so soon after the quake.
For now, Breedlove will be extending its hours to meet the need in Haiti. But Fish also says that this is just the beginning.
"There's going to be an awful lot of work to be done. And I guess over the coming days we'll find out a lot more detail of exactly what that is," Fish said.
Right now the machines at Breedlove are producing just about everything that they're capable of producing. But with an earthquake there's always a chance of a tsunami afterwards. If a tsunami hits Haiti, they'll need to produce even more.
