Catholic deacons gathered Sunday in southwest suburban Lemont to finish packing hundreds of buckets filled with supplies for those affected by Hurricane Helene in North Carolina.
The effort was led by Buckets of Hope, a ministry led by deacons of the Archdiocese of Chicago. The group gathered in the garage of St. Mary’s Franciscan Monastery to fill the last 10 of 450 5-gallon buckets with cleaning supplies destined for Asheville.
Deacon John Vidmar of the Slovenian Catholic Mission in Lemont, which is headquartered in the monastery, said the ministry coordinates with local officials about what supplies are most needed, and cleaning supplies were at the top of the list.
The ministry is preparing to send another 400 buckets to residents in Florida who are dealing with the aftermath of Hurricane Milton. The ministry is seeking donations to help fill those buckets.
“People will be slowly digging out of Florida and they need first-responders right now, but when they’ll be able to get into their homes they’ll start needing cleaning supplies,” Vidmar told the Sun-Times on Sunday.
Each bucket contains 14 common cleaning items, including liquid laundry detergent, household cleaner mixed with water, dish soap, trash bags, scouring pads, clothes pins and dust masks.
It takes $30 to fill each bucket, Vidmar said, so people can also choose to donate that amount instead of supplies.
Hurricane Helene resulted in the deaths of roughly 230 people and wiped out roads, electrical power and cellphone service after making landfall Sept. 26 as a Category 4 storm. About half the victims were in North Carolina, but dozens more were killed in Georgia and South Carolina. Asheville, a city in the western mountains of North Carolina, was particularly battered.
Just two weeks later, Hurricane Milton tore across central Florida as a Category 3 storm, flooding barrier islands and spawning tornadoes. At least 11 people were killed.
The ministry is also sending 50 boxes of clothes and diapers donated by area nonprofits to North Carolina. The buckets and boxes will be loaded onto a 50-foot moving van Tuesday morning for delivery.
Vidmar said it’s important to show the people who were impacted that there are those out there who are thinking about them, even if they are strangers to us.
“If we never see them in our lives, what matters is that we’ve tried to help them in a way,” Vidmar said. “It’s important for people to understand that there are other people out there that care about what happened to them.”
Contributing: AP