Eight Days of Hope traveling to Texas to provide aid after Hurricane Beryl

BUFFALO, N.Y. (WIVB) — Hurricane Beryl has left much of Texas in the dark. To help in picking up the pieces, Eight Days of Hope has crews currently traveling to Texas to provide tens of thousands of meals for those in need.

“Hurricane Beryl caused widespread damage from the shores of Texas, right into Houston, the fourth largest city in the country,” said Steve Tybor, founder and CEO of Eight Days of Hope. “The power outages are a huge issue right now. There’s tens of thousands of trees down, homes have flooded, but right now people are looking to have access to food and water, our most basic needs.”

Throughout the 19 years of service, EDOH has grown to have more than 60,000 volunteers nationwide and have helped rebuild more than ten thousand homes.

Beryl is the tenth disaster they’ve helped this year, the most they’ve ever seen around this time of year.

They’re hoping to start providing hot meals in Texas tonight, and say they can make more than eight thousand meals during a two hour period. They also will be traveling down to Texas with trailers that will provide services such as a hot shower or a fresh load of laundry for those without power.

“When you lose power, it’s not a problem of not being able to turn on the TV or use your blow dryer, it’s your refrigerator is out–the gas station is out down the street and the supermarket is closed as well, so we will be there for multiple days providing food and water,” said Tybor.

It’s not the first time the organization is traveling down to Texas during a time of need. Tybor says in 2018, they rebuilt 808 homes in eight days after Hurricane Harvey, the second worst disaster he’s ever seen.

“Katrina then Harvey,” Tybor said. “Houston, 330,000 homes flooded. Think about that. There’s about 330,000 people that live in Buffalo. If every single person represented a home, that’s how many homes were flooded and none of them were in a flood zone so no one had flood insurance.”

EDOH has more than 2 million dollars in equipment ready to help with Hurricane Beryl and they’re always looking for more volunteers.

“I’ll tell you it’s life changing, not only for the families that are being served but also the volunteers serving,” said Tybor.

If you’re interested in joining EDOH, you can click here.

Hope Winter is a reporter and multimedia journalist who has been part of the News 4 team since 2021. See more of her work here .