Five days after a sudden hailstorm hit Rock Hill, the city's main soup kitchen was finally able to cook meals Thursday.
“Monday was creative because we weren't prepared for something like that,” said Jan Stephenson, director of Dorothy Day Soup Kitchen on Crawford Road. “We had food, but we couldn't cook. On Monday, we made peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. On Tuesday, we had turkey, ham, and lettuce sandwiches, and yesterday we went out and had grilled chicken. I had a sandwich. But today is the first day they'll be back with a hot meal.”
Like most of its neighbors on Rock Hill's south side, Dorothy Day Soup Kitchen spent much of last week without power or the ability to cook. Without power to refrigerators and freezers, many residents of Southside, Rock Hill's poorest neighborhood and one of the city's highest median age residents, are forced to throw away fresh produce. Probably not.
Stevenson said the soup kitchen is trying to prepare dinners, possibly for this weekend, to help make up for food losses in households.
About 100 residents stopped by Wednesday, he said.
Stephenson expects there will likely be more visits to the soup kitchen next week as emergency meal distributions from many non-governmental organizations currently in the city begin to depart over the next week.
Stevenson also expects to see more visits to food pantries across the city. Sandra Evans, president of Manna House Food Pantry, said Thursday that “400 people have already turned up” for the weekly food distribution on Saturday, but she sees no evidence that more will show up. He said he had never heard of it.
Complicating matters for Dorothy Day, part of Crawford Road is still closed for repairs, which normally draws dozens of visitors a day in front of the soup kitchen. The city bus that drops them off cannot pass. The nearest bus stop is a few blocks away on Haeckel Boulevard.
“They walk from wherever the bus can drop them off,” Stevenson said. “Some people walk maybe a mile or a mile and a half.”
As of this writing, the city does not have an estimate of when bus service to Crawford Road will resume.
Stevenson said she is most concerned about the elderly visitors who rely on soup kitchens for their meals.
“Eventually, everything will be back to a place where you can reroute and pass, even if the road in the opposite direction is closed,” she said. “But it just shocks our seniors.”
