British Columbia Shluchim Face Raging Floods With Kindness

By COLlive reporter

One of the often-quoted phrases heard in The Centre for Judaism of The Fraser Valley/Chabad in British Columbia is “A Little Light Dispels a Lot of Darkness!”, so when darkness – in the form of devastating floods – hit parts of the Fraser Valley and other parts of British Columbia, Rabbi Falik and Simie Schtroks took it as their cue to spread light.

Recent devastating floods and landslides in British Columbia caused by record rains crippled transportation links and forced the evacuations of thousands of people.

“Although the Jewish community here is relatively small, we had to counter the raging floods which forced entire towns and cities to be evacuated, with a flood of kindness,” said Rabbi Schtroks.

Although they were in the midst of preparing for 3 significant Chanukah programs, Rabbi and Mrs. Schtroks stopped everything they were doing to collect, pack and organize the shipping of items to help victims of the devastating flooding.

“Without knowing yet how we would get the food over to those in crisis, I put out a call to the community to bring non-perishable, ready to eat, nourishing food items,” said Simie Schtroks.

Meanwhile, she also got in touch with MPs, MLA’s and Pastors in the impacted regions as well as various pilots of small planes.

She was told by the secretary for MP Randeep Sarai that they had done the first airlift and people were literally lined up for the food at a gas station.

Snow had begun to fall so they dropped the food to be distributed and returned immediately, planning to go back in as soon as the weather improved, they said.

The urgent need for a collection became even stronger, as a new storm was threatening more flooding.

“One of the families in our Jewish community was evacuated from Meritt BC and were stuck in Kamloops for the week,” Simie says.

The family was in a motel, but still needed assistance.

“Although I wanted to help as quickly as possible, I wanted to make sure that we would be sending a significant amount. With the help of an anonymous donor, we managed to purchase caseloads of items that would be very helpful.”

The Schtrokses were joined by volunteers to help repack the items and get them to a volunteer pilot at the nearby Langley Airport, to be sent out to help.

“We are very proud of our small Jewish community with a big heart, who came forth to help their neighbors. May G-d bless everyone and keep us all safe. Our hope is that we brought at least a bit of light and hope to Hope, BC as well as to those evacuated from Mission, Princeton, and other affected areas,” Rabbi Schtroks said.