One community group has taken to the skies to provide a warm meal to hundreds of truckers stranded in Hope, B.C., due to recent floods.
Every major transportation route between the Lower Mainland and the Interior has been cut by washouts, flooding or landslides following record-breaking rainfall across southern B.C. between Saturday and Monday.
Volunteers at Khalsa Aid Canada have put in long hours to cook and package up food for the approximately 300 truckers in Hope.
“They’ve run out of food that they’ve packed from home,” Baljit Kaur Lally, Lower Mainland coordinator for Khalsa Aid Canada, said.
“So the biggest thing is food and tea. And then because there are a lot of people stuck there and I’m sure they can use fresh fruit, we thought we’d packed that.”
Lally said plans came together quickly on Tuesday after she saw a Facebook post about truckers in need of help. She put out a call for volunteers, who went shopping for items such as milk, tea, sugar, fruits, and non-perishables.
A group of volunteers at the BC Khalsa Darbar Society in Vancouver took it from there.
“Here at the gurdwara, the kitchens are run by our sweet, retired ‘aunties,’ we call them. Every elderly person is our ‘auntie’ or ‘uncle,'” Lally said. “So they were here at five o’clock in the morning cooking, as well as the priests here.”
“They all banded together…and we’re here to pack up the fruits of their labour and take it out to the people who really need it.”
When London Air Services got a call from Khalsa Aid, they immediately agreed to donate a flight.
“They’re a fantastic organization,” London Air Services president Dylan Thomas said of Khalsa Aid.” “They respond very quickly and in some cases faster than the government.”
Thomas added that they were happy to volunteer their time.
“The truckers are the backbone of our Canadian economy,” he said.
“There are truckers stranded in Hope who can’t leave their loads behind. That’s their responsibility. These truckers are going to be there for a while. So we’ve donated this flight for them.”
— with files from The Canadian Press