Salvation Army Maj. Steve Welch, who with his wife Mary manages the Salvation Army command in Vicksburg, is presently in Apalachicola, Fla., helping with Salvation Army’s response in the wake of Hurricane Michael.

Welch is part of a command team overseeing nine canteens that are feeding people in several locations around the damaged area, and is based in a high school gymnasium that doubles as the team’s warehouse and dormitory.

He described the situation where he has been as “pretty bad. My first place to work was Panama City. Coming over here (to Apalachicola) from Panama City, it got progressively worse. Mexico Beach was pretty bad. The road was turned into one lane out of necessity because it was affected by the storm.”

The road, Welch said, had parts where the pavement was missing and other parts that were bumpy.

“Going through that same area, there was a house sticking out in the road — the corner of the house was in the road — and then a few blocks down there was another house on the other side of the road sticking out in the road. You could see the pilings where they used to be.”

He arrived in Panama City the day after Michael came ashore.

“There weren’t too many places we could go, so we commuted from Pensacola until we could get a suitable place in Panama City in a Salvation Army church, but there was no power there, there was no water; it was pretty primitive living, but they (the canteens) still went out and served. I believe there is still a crew there.”

Welch said the Salvation Army has a distribution site at the school in Apalachicola, adding officials “were gracious enough to give us the building. It’s got power; in fact, the power came on a few hours before we arrived and they have running water.” He said people can bathe with the water but cannot drink it, and a fuel truck comes to the area each morning delivering fuel for the trucks.

While Apalachicola, he said, was not hit as hard as Pensacola and Panama City, areas east of the city were in worse shape. He said one area the trucks and mobile kitchen were trying to reach, Carabelle, a city east of Apalachicola, was in accessible.

And while the people they’ve helped have been appreciative of the assistance, he said, they will sometimes tell workers about others who need assistance. “They’ll tell us, ‘No, we’ve got everything we need, but there are others who need it worse than we do.’”