US / pt-PT
This post is unedited and quoted directly from James Atkin, part of our Goal Zero Relief team. His email update from last night: "Wanted to give you a update of what we did today and where we will be tomorrow. We are running on 3 hours of sleep and charged a solid 20 hours straight today but it was worth it, needless to say this email may not make sense in some parts. Jaremey, Dave and Royce are crushing it and working really hard to get our logistics and processes figured out so we can be efficient and effective. This morning we met our gear at a warehouse in Allentown, PA (which by the way is a few hours from the really hard hit areas, so we did a lot of driving), we had a few issues with the tires on the Penske truck but still made it over to a town on the coast in mid New Jersey named Brick. We first showed up to the FEMA location to meet up with Team Rubicon Division 3. We then proceeded to the community center across the street where they had a little bit of back up power and a lot of the locals were hanging out there for hot food and to charge their phones up. We opened the truck and gave one guy a Lighthouse and then he went inside and pretty much everyone came outside to see what was going on. These people have no power and the power company is saying it could be a week or weeks. The Lighthouse and Torch were a hit as well as the Escape 150 kits. There were a few elderly people that really were humble and didn't want to take anything because they thought other people would need it more than them, but they were dying for some light and a little bit of power. One lady has sleep apnea and was really excited that the Escape 150 could run her CPAP so she could sleep a little a easier. After that we had to get out of Brick because there is a 7 o'clock curfew so we headed up to Brooklyn to meet Aaron in division 2 of Team Rubicon. They set up shop at the Brooklyn climbing gym, which is the most insane climbing gym I have ever seen. They have a lot of extra warehouse space so we dropped off the rest of the gear out of the truck and will proceed to move all of our gear to the Brooklyn warehouse in the next 2 days. The owner of the gym loves GZ and was really excited to have us post up at his spot. We spent the last 4 hours quality checking some gear so we feel confident in giving it out tomorrow. Every single gas station within 50 miles to the coast is packed, I mean packed! We drove by one in Brooklyn and there was a line of cars for 2 miles and a line of people with gas cans for a couple of blocks, and this was at midnight! CRAZY. We will be loading up another truckload and heading into Brooklyn to set up the kits and get all of the gear organized before we head into the Rockaways, around the area of Belle Harbor. Apparently they were hit super hard and haven't had much help yet from FEMA or the state. We are really lucky that we were able to team up with Rubicon, they know how to organize and execute their missions, so its great to learn from them. We will keep updates coming as much as possible. We haven't even seen the surface to scratch it yet with what we can do out here. Honestly, we could use 20 more people and 4 more trucks! I'll be updating tomorrow with photos."