Nonprofit with Riverside roots headed to hurricane stricken Bahamas
A nonprofit with roots in Riverside County is ready to launch a massive effort to help people already devastated by Hurricane Dorian.
When the place that was your home is now indistinguishable from the massive mounds of rubble around it, there’s no going back.
“Nassau is now going to have a huge problem of now having to manage the influx of all these people who have lost everything,” said Ted Honcharik, via Facetime from Florida.
Honcharik has seen the need for fuel first hand through disaster after disaster.
“It’s incredible when you can put 50 gallons in a light stand and provide light for 50,000 people in Haiti and a doctor comes out as asks you ‘what do you do?’ and ‘what you’ve done?’ and tells you ‘you don’t know how many rapes you prevented that night, because of now that they have light.”
Stories like these are just one reason the retired petroleum distributor now uses his contacts in the field to provide fuel across the world in times of need, as the founder and Chairman of the Board of the nonprofit Fuel Relief Fund, which he started in Riverside.
“We’ve given fuel to every international aid agency that you can list, from the Red Cross, United Nations, Doctors Without Borders, Save the Nations,” Honcharik lists.
Tomorrow Honcharik will take two satellite phones and head from the port of Fort Lauderdale more than 20 hours across the Atlantic to personally help distribute 200 55-gallon barrels of diesel fuel to Nassau during a crucial time for the islands.
“Even though their tanks are full (at the beginning),” said Honcharik, “that (fuel) gets depleted very fast due to everyone is operating on a generator. So it’s not just the transportation of food, water, medicine, for first responders, it’s a way for you to charge your cell phone, it’s a way to provide you light, or putting fuel into a generator that’s pumping the Red Cross’ water treatment plant that they just put in a village that’s just been wiped out.”
Donate to the Fuel Relief Fund here
