Gary INDIANA urgent pleas

" Listen my neighbors In Woods Park subdivision from 48 to 51st street right off Cleveland in Gary , In are not only in a black out the county came through and put sewer system and grinder pumps in the day before the storms never hooking them up to the electric boxes so they are using buckets , and lining their toilets with bags going poop and throwing out. Can’t flush toilets no running water, and nobody’s is rushing to help them! Please send help yards are flooded with feces! There’s elderly, small children please help." Deb Guzman, 8.21.26 on FB

Deb Guzman

Thousands of residents in Gary, Indiana are entering a 10th day without electricity after floods from severe thunderstorms battered the region. Full restoration isn't expected until next week in a city where a third of residents live below the poverty line, forcing many to choose between spoiled food and unpaid hotel bills. 

From newsletter: Five Minute Daily <fiveminutedaily@mail.fiveminutedaily.com>

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First, there’s a major crisis in Northwest Indiana right now, particularly in Gary, where the predominantly Black population has been without power for ten days due to damage inflicted by a derecho on August 11. They’ve been hit incredibly hard. I’ve seen a couple of posts on social media saying the power is starting to come back on but I haven’t seen that corroborated by any news organizations so I’m not sure we can trust it. Even if the power does come back on today, a tremendous amount of damage has already been done. The community is suffering horribly.

If you have any money to spare I’ve done a bit of research and found a place, the Legacy Foundation, that is raising money for so Gary residents can eat, replace damaged goods, buy water (many of them are on wells, which require electricity to pump), and more. The donation page is here.

For more information on this slow-rolling catastrophe and why White Supremacy made it worse you can watch my video here. Sharing it is anther way to help!

From Jess Craven's Chop Wood/Carry Water, Aug 21, 2026.

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WCK is responding in Gary, Indiana, where thousands of residents have been without power for over a week. On August 11, a storm whipped through the state, damaging power lines and roads. WCK and our local partners are working to serve meals to families without access to food.

Read More: https://wck.org/news/gary-in-power-outage/... #ChefsForIndiana

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All the spiritual paths converge at this point, where people are suffering, where little news is covering it...do we do something to help our neighbors now? I remember close to 2 years ago when Hurricane Helene hit unexpectedly in the western North Carolina mountains. No cell service. No water. No electricity for days.

Surviving and maybe voting

Argh! I've reached some kind of limit. First thing this morning, I wanted the warmth and compassion of a mother. Me? At my age? Well, that's the inner child who has certainly been pretty quiet while all this hullabaloo of 25 days has happened/

And now I want, desperately, a normal meal. One that doesn't have the work-around things like bottled or boiled water, paper plates so I don't have to wash them...just sit down and enjoy a meal. Sorry, going to get pizza yesterday were we had paper plates, canned sodas, and plastic forks...was just more of the same.

We're adapting! Damn it!

And surviving too!

But maybe I could drive 50 miles and find a restaurant with ice water, and cloth napkins...and a menu of more than 6 items. I'm thinking about it...

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Last Thursday I gladly picked up two more flats of drinkable bottled water by a church in Swannanoa. They also gave me a bucket of cleaning supplies. I could use the bucket (but not the size large rubber gloves!) I'll give away the caustic chemical cleaners.

I was actually looking for the hot free meal which was prepared by the World Central Kitchen, behind a place I'd never been, called the Burnt Pretzel. 

There was a sparsely populated parking lot and I walked from there to a couple of tents from which people were walking with a black take-home container. I walked right up and received chicken chunks and beans and rice, and supposedly potatoes and carrots, and some cut up fruit. I also got a cold bottle of water and ambled over to sit at one of the picnic tables within a little fenced area. 

One bite of the chicken and it's dryness and whatever seasoning was on it meant I chewed for 10 minutes (so it felt.) I tried one of the funny cubes of "potatoes" and it was hard...and I thought maybe they were passing turnips as potatoes, so I spit it out (delicately of course). So I just picked up and went back to the car, thinking a good nuking and adding some barbecue sauce might help things.

But first...

right down the street, as I drove closer to turn onto US 70, there was more flood evidence. 

I tried to slow down and get a photo of the repairs near my apartment in Black Mountain on S. Blue Ridge Rd. where the bridge over the Swannanoa River had washed completely away. As I drove, this is what I could get...

Then I decided to try to vote. A neighbor in the apartments said they'd voted by parking in the handicap voting slot...so I gave it a try. First there was a funeral going on across the street from the library, and the bank on the corner had someone out by its parking lot to keep voters and mourners out. A whole lot of cars had been parked on the street as people walked to either of those venues. 

I parked next to the disabled voting slot, where a big SUV was parked doing the curb-side voting.  I was in the disabled parking slot for voting...but I'd have to park and get in line.

So guess what I did.

Yep, decided I could get behind another 40-50 people later, but I needed to eat something. So home to put some of the food into a bowl and add barbecue sauce, and heat it up. Yum. Noticed I didn't even try the "potatoes."

And Friday...I went back to vote.

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The sobering photo of around my area hit by Hurricane Helene Sept 26/27, 2024