New Sudbury Inner-City Home food bank hit by flood

A flood has temporarily closed the New Sudbury location of a food bank. The food bank will operate out of its downtown location until repairs are made.

A flood has temporarily closed the New Sudbury location of the Inner-City Home of Sudbury Food Bank.

It happened on Tuesday and now the food bank will operate exclusively out of its downtown location until repairs are made.

The water has since been pumped out but there was damage done to the food bank on Dollard Avenue and repairs are now needed before it can reopen.

“The challenge we faces is we were walking in water almost over the top of our shoes and it kept coming in we couldn’t stop it,” said Inner-City Home Foodbank of Sudbury chair, Joe Drago.

“The rugs were all just sopping wet and started to smell musty.”

Officials said canned goods were okay – but perishables needed to be moved quickly.

Clients from the water-damaged location will now be temporarily served at 251 Elm Street.

The organization chair told CTV News that food, staff and volunteers from New Sudbury are all headed to the Elm Street location.

“There is still a need for the food we have here, but it’s unfortunate because we opened this place the New Sudbury people had a real distance to get down to Elm Street,” said Drago.

He added that the need for food assistance increases daily.

“Minimum wage and they have two or three children – it’s impossible with minimum wage to look after a family,” Drago said.

“They have to pay rent. We have people living in cars.”

The organization said their New Sudbury landlord, the D’Angelo family, is generously footing the bill for the flood repairs so the food bank can spend money on meeting the growing demand helping people with food insecurity.