FORT PIERCE, Fla. — The Treasure Coast Food Bank in Fort Pierce is hoping to receive a portion of Taylor Swift's $5 million donation.
Last week the organization Feeding America announced on their social media page "the money will help communities rebuild and recover providing essential food, clean water and people affected by these devastating storms."
"I was very, very happy, we're all big Taylor Swift fans," said Judith Cruz CEO, President Treasure Coast Food Bank. "The ability for her to do that, will really save lives, that's the beauty of her and her story and her songs and all the things that she does behind the scenes that people really don't know about."
The Treasure Coast Food Bank is one of 200 food banks nationwide that partners with Feeding America.
Cruz said Treasure Coast Food Bank has daily calls with Feeding America and its state association, Feeding Florida, to assess the needs in each community and determine how much to grant out from the donation.
"There's disaster in the Carolinas that's happening now that was impacted. We've obviously suffered loss of life here, which is tragic and devastating, there's long term recovery here, there's long term recovery there as well," said Cruz. "We're a giant family and we support each other in any way that we can."
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Treasure Coast Food Bank has been in the community for 35 years with three facilities in Fort Pierce.
Cruz said a portion of the Treasure Coast Food Bank staff was impacted by the storm and that one distribution reopened on Tuesday, but a food production kitchen suffered from power outage damages and is not running at full capacity.
"We're making do, we're serving hot meals, we're serving cold meals," said Cruz. " We're having to do things manually and reshift and refocus and retrain people, because they're not used to the old way of doing food production. All of this happened in a matter of a day and we're trying to catch up."
They're expecting their weekly 250,000 client count to go up to 350,000 because of the storm damage.
Treasure Coast Food Bank said they have tripled their outreach team, who are on the ground where the tornadoes touched down, connecting with 2,000+ people a day.
"You can barely get through. There are so many volunteers that are helping," said Carol Jackson, who was in line at the Treasure Coast Food Bank to get food after she had to throw away her groceries from the power outage caused by the storm. "We wasn't expecting all this. We really wasn't."
She said her nephew lives in Spanish Lakes that was in the path of the tornado, where seven people lost their lives.
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Her nephew's house was spared but his neighbors weren't as lucky.
"The things I don't need, I'll take and help someone else," said Jackson. "They really appreciate it (the help), they need more help they really do. It's tore up out there, it was devastated."
WPTV reached out to Fort Pierce who did not have final numbers on damages as of Wednesday.
“The city of Fort Pierce is currently assessing the full extent of the storm's impact. While we have transitioned into the cleanup stage, gathering accurate data on damages takes time. We are working diligently to collect and process this information. Once we have finalized these details, we will make them available.”
"I done seen cars flipped over, houses destroyed, roof half gone," said Essie Harriell who was in line at Treasure Coast Food Bank to get supplies for her neighbors.
"I'm just trying to see if I can get little necessities like water or any can goods that they can do," said Harriell. "If I'm able to help that's what I'll try to do."
Treasure Coast Food Bank welcomes anyone in need of help.
You can also order online to pick up supplies like Jackson and Harriell.
They are also looking for volunteers to help with their cause. To volunteer go to stophunger.org.
