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FEMA delivers meals heading to senior centers

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MARION (WSIL) -- Officials are moving to help keep seniors in southern Illinois from going hungry. Both state and federal disaster agencies teamed up for a big food delivery Wednesday in Marion.

Close to 20,000 boxes of food arrived, with 13,000 heading to senior centers in southern Illinois. Those boxes were unloaded on pallets and stored locally at Cornerstone Church with volunteers from Illinois Baptist Disaster Relief organizing their eventual delivery.

"Usually we're involved with flood recovery, or wind recovery from tornadoes and hurricanes," explains Arnold Ramage with the Williamson County chapter of Illinois Baptist Disaster Relief. He says this is the organization's first experience with the delivery of food. "Our volunteers will disperse those meals directly to the centers, and then the centers will disperse the meals and the food to the individuals."

With seniors centers closed due to the coronavirus pandemic, meal preparations and deliveries rely on volunteers, and if they become sick or unavailable, seniors could go with out.

"FEMA and even IEMA, the Illinois portion, declared it an emergency," said Becky Salazar, executive director of Egyptian Area Agency on Aging, adding that senior centers are some of the last locations to reopen. "And now they have a little bit of reassurance that, well now we have these meals that we can get out to them, so that if an emergency like that did happen they know they have food."

While restrictions lift and things look more normal, seniors still need help said Salazar. "There are thousands getting served the meals throughout the area and these are definitely needed."

Those boxes will make their way into the homes of seniors throughout the region over the course of the next two weeks.