Springdale Cub Scouts pack hurricane cleanup kits as Dorian hurls toward Florida
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Nine-year-old Gabriel Wallace plopped a hard plastic scrub brush into a household bucket in the basement of Springdale United Presbyterian Church, then paused to adjust his black-rimmed glasses and pull out a pen and checklist.
One bottle of laundry detergent, check.
Five sponges, check.
Thirty-six to 50 clothespins, check.
Wallace was working alongside about a dozen fellow Cub Scouts who gathered this week for their latest service project — making hurricane cleanup kits.
“We’re actually doing a lot of help because some time on Monday and Tuesday, there’s going to be a hurricane,” Wallace said in between filling five-gallon buckets with supplies Thursday night.
In assembly-line fashion, the boys and their family members took turns filling buckets with cleaning and other items chosen based on guidance from nonprofit relief agencies.
Religious groups, churches and local hardware stores donated the items.
The kits included spray cleaners, bug repellent, air freshener, face masks, work gloves and trash bags, disinfectant wipes and laundry detergent — “which is good if you need to clean clothes or clean up messy floors,” Wallace pointed out.
Wallace, who recently began fourth grade at Acmetonia Elementary School in Harmar, said “it feels great” to be putting the kits together for people who might need them.
“You know that someone’s going to be able to be helped when we’re doing our work,” Wallace said. “We know our work is useful.”
The hurricane kits will be sent to Eastbrook Mission Barn near New Castle, according to Jim Anderson, committee chairman of Pack 554.
“Once they’re up there, they (nonprofit workers) will actually inspect the buckets to make sure that we did it correctly, and then the buckets will be sealed and shipped out all over the world,” Anderson said.
In the past two years, Pack 554 has done a collective 4,700 hours of community service, including collecting more than 18,000 cans of food for local food banks and planting more than 3,000 flags on the graves of veterans.
They also made about two dozen hurricane cleanup buckets last year and they were distributed in South Carolina and Florida.
“This year they could very well go to Puerto Rico, Florida, wherever they get hit,” Anderson said. “With Hurricane Dorian right now off the coast of Florida, our timing is good.”
Nationwide, affiliated groups and Scouts have donated more than 4,000 buckets a year.
“Any aid that comes in, even if it’s 20 buckets, added together with other people across the country gets a great result,” Anderson said. “It adds up to a lot.”
Pack 554 has 42 Cub Scouts in kindergarten through fifth grade.
Anderson said he’s hopeful that as many as 30 more Scouts could join the pack in September.