Local businesses help flood victims
Published 3:00 am Friday, August 19, 2016
Two Troy natives working in Donaldsville, Louisiana, with Bonnie Plants returned to Troy on Thursday with a company truck to collect donations for flood victims.
Andrew Foster, station manager, and Jimmy Lucas, salesman, set up Thursday in the Lowe’s parking lot to collect all kinds of items to help provide relief to those affected.
Flooding began in Louisiana last Thursday as storms dumped two feet of rain on the Baton Rouge area. Rain continues to fall on the area, and it has been declared by the American Red Cross as the worst disaster since Hurricane Sandy.
“We work with the people of Louisiana everyday and we were just devastated by the flood,” Lucas said. “We were trying to figure out a way to help and we came up with the idea of coming here and filling a truck up.”
Foster and Lucas set up for day one of the donation drive around 8 a.m. and will be back out again today from 8 a.m. until about 5 p.m.
“We’re going to be here until we fill this truck up,” Lucas said. “And if there’s a good turnout, we could even bring another truck.”
Lucas said Thursday afternoon that the drive was going well, considering they had only gotten things together yesterday.
“We really just got this together and we were relying on Facebook to get the word out,” Lucas said. “We hadn’t even thought about getting the media involved.”
Foster and Lucas are collecting all kinds of items including clothing, sheets, blankets, pillows, pillowcases, toiletries, baby items, feminine products, nonperishable items, cleaning supplies, school supplies, bug spray and boxes.