Emergencies Deplete Food Pantries

Rising Heating Bills, Drop in Donations Compound the Need

At Elizabeth House, a food pantry and meal kitchen in Laurel, Judy Kuntz eyes the shelves of canned fruit and vegetables and worries.

Even in good weather, families come here for groceries they cannot afford to buy. Now, with the arrival of cold weather, rising natural gas and oil prices will make times tougher. If they pay their heating bill, they will come up short of money for food, Kuntz said.

"We are part of their budgets," she said. "As people get their gas bills, it's going to be much worse."

Yet Elizabeth House is starting the winter with lean reserves.

"Donations have gone elsewhere," Kuntz said.

Emergency food supplies around Maryland were depleted by relief efforts this year in the Gulf of Mexico region after Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. Local donors focused their giving there, and the Maryland Food Bank and the District-based Capital Area Food Bank, which serves Montgomery and Prince George's counties, rushed food to survivors.

"I would have taken the whole warehouse down there," said William G. Ewing, the Maryland Food Bank's executive director, reflecting on the devastation he saw on a trip to the region. "People were flat-out ruined."

Maryland has the third-highest median income in the nation. Yet more than 470,000 Marylanders are living in poverty. The state's poverty rate rose in 2004 for the second straight year, to 8.8 percent.

Nearly half of the people who get assistance at the Baltimore-based Maryland Food Bank say they must choose between paying for food or for heat and other utilities, according to officials there. "Month after month, they are making choices," said Teresa Ernst, a spokeswoman for the food bank, which serves 900 food pantries, soup kitchens and emergency shelters.

Ewing is confident that donations will come. But the major Stuff-a-Bus campaign has come up short this fall, leaving less on the shelves for the winter.

Last weekend, local agencies and community groups in St. Mary's County sponsored a Stuff-a-Bus food collection. Similar food drives, in which residents are asked to bring nonperishable items to fill a local public transit bus, are conducted across the state.

The St. Mary's Transit System bus was parked outside the Three Notch Theatre in Lexington Park, and a special reception was held to coincide with the opening of the Newtowne Players' production of "Inspecting Carol."