Santa’s Helpers Alaska is working to determine the extent of the damage to its supply of toys and other items after its Fairbanks storage area flooded.
FAIRBANKS, Alaska - Flooding in its South Cushman storage space has left Santa’s Helpers Alaska scrambling to determine the extent of the damage to its supply of toys and other items.
The non-profit organization, part of the North Star Charitable Foundation, provides toys, books, blankets and food boxes to more than 300 families in need every Christmas. Board Secretary Joe Gonzales said the storage space flooded because the septic froze, causing snowmelt to flow into the area, which lies below ground level.
“I believe the conditions of the winter definitely contributed to it,” Joe said, referring to this winter’s extended cold, followed by a period alternating between freeze and thaw. Joe and his son spent a frantic day pumping the water out of the storage unit, leaving a layer of mud and silt behind to be cleaned up.
According to Joe’s wife, volunteer and organizer Joy Gonzales, at the time of the flood, the unit held a variety of toys including stuffed animals, books and other items left over from last year, which would have made their mission this year easier to complete.
“I don’t know how much we’re going to be able to save of that... of course we don’t want to send anything with mildew or mold or anything like that,” Joy said, “So, we’re being very careful about what we keep and how we use the resources that we have now. ” Volunteers are currently sorting through all the items to determine what item can be kept and what has sustained too much damage.
Not everything has been ruined by the flood, with Joe estimating that the floodwaters rose six to eight inches off the floor.
“We had things on single pallets which is about four inches so unfortunately the water came up two to three inches on most of our boxes,” he explained. Any new toys that were still in their box were saturated if they were at or below the flood level, Joe said, along with any stuffed animals in the water’s path.
However, many of the boxes were stacked on top of others, leaving the ones on top generally untouched by the flood.
“Everything in those boxes should be fine,” Joe determined, saying that many toys were stored from last year in plastic bags, which should have blocked the water. In order to continue providing its previous level of service this year, “It’s just gonna be a lot more work,” Joy said.
“We’re going to have to ask more of the community. We don’t want to... give less than we usually do. Like, we want to make sure that kids still have a good Christmas. ”“We’ve gotten people saying, ‘We would love to help wash the stuffed animals.
We would love to help try and clean things,’ and ‘Oh, I have bags of stuffies,’ because that was one of the first things that we saw that was damaged was the last of our stuffies,” Joy explained. Last year, some families and friends began donating money to Santa’s Helpers to honor each other’s birthdays or other special occasions, according to Joy, and the non-profit also takes donations of Christmas items like toys, art supplies and especially “Play-Doh.
Everybody wants Play-Doh, even the teenagers, so now everybody six and up gets a thing of Play-Doh in their bag. ” For now, Joe called the storage cleanup a work in progress, guessing that the process would continue for the next few weeks. He said Santa’s Helpers will continue to work toward making “Christmas happen for those that need it.
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Gonzales Joe And Joy Flooding South Cushman Fairbanks Storage Area Toys
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