AUBURN – Two rail cars will be pulling out of the warehouse at Safe Handling Inc. on Monday morning loaded with food, water and supplies for the Katrina-ravaged Gulf Coast.
And with them will be the good wishes of dozens of local folks who scrambled to connect 200,000 pounds of supplies in Maine with the people who need them more than 1,500 miles away.
“This couldn’t have happened without the ingenuity and cooperation of Safe Handling and the railway,” said Charles “Budd” Large, executive director of the Good Shepherd Food-Bank.
As coordinator of this statewide clearinghouse for food donations, Large had a big problem. A three-day campaign for bottled water donations last week at the Maine Mall netted the food bank more than six tractor-trailer loads of bottled water.
The problem was getting the water from the food bank’s Hotel Road warehouse to the Gulf Coast where thousands of people displaced by Hurricane Katrina are in desperate need.
Large was calling trucking companies, hoping he could arrange transport when he got a call from Bob Drake at Safe Handling, the chemical manufacturing and distribution company a couple of miles away.
Drake wanted to know if there was some way his company could help with Katrina relief.
“You don’t happen to have six tractor-trailers sitting around do you?” asked Large.
“He said No, but let me make a call,'” said Large.
Drake contacted people at the St. Lawrence and Atlantic Railroad, which has a spur from its line that leads directly into Safe Handling’s warehouse. The company uses the railway to import raw materials used in processing chemicals for the Maine paper industry.
Together they worked out a plan to deliver the supplies via rail.
“I never even considered rails,” said Large with a laugh. “But it’s perfect for moving this quantity, this quickly.”
The cars will leave Auburn, head to Quebec, where they’ll connect with the Canadian National rail system, go to Montreal, then Chicago and finally Mississippi or Louisiana, whichever is more accessible.
“We’re proud to help with a good cause like this,” said Ed Foley, vice president of sales and marketing for the St. Lawrence and Atlantic. The rail companies are hauling the goods at no cost. Foley said the typical line haul charge for this kind of freight would be several thousand dollars.
Crews began moving the donations from the Good Shepherd Food-Bank on Thursday afternoon to the Safe Handling warehouse. Extra hands from Fore River and New England Public warehouses will help load the donations into the rail cars, which are arriving from Montreal today.
In addition to the bottled water, Good Shepherd is sending thousands of pounds of packaged snack food and cleaning supplies, all priority items in the hurricane disaster area. All together, the goods will fill two rail cars.
Once the cars reach their destination, they will be met by trucks from America’s Second Harvest, the national food relief organization, and distributed. Foley expects the trip will take eight or nine days.
Large said that’s great, given the urgency.
“There will be months of need ahead,” he said.
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