Elba Garcia

Winter Storm Relief Effort Helps Hundreds in Need of Food, Water

NBC 5 and Telemundo 39 partnered with the Chris Howell Foundation and Dallas County Commissioner Elba Garcia for the relief effort

NBCUniversal, Inc.

North Texans who may have been impacted by the winter storm got some much-needed help at a drive-thru event Saturday at Mountain View College in Dallas. 

NBC 5 and Telemundo 39 partnered with the Chris Howell Foundation and Dallas County Commissioner Elba Garcia for the event.

“We feel like this will help families tremendously," said Chris Howell, the foundation's co-founder and CEO. "This is our fourth winter storm relief drive since it happened, and families have been coming out by the droves.”

No registration was needed for the drive, which ultimately served 2,400 families and distributed 96,000 pounds of food and 4,800 cases of water. No one was turned away.

Donald Driver, a former Green Bay Packers wide receiver, helped out and added 63,000 bottles of water to give away.   

“We wanted to be able to make an impact in my hometown. I’m born and raised right here in Texas. So we wanted to make a complete impact," Driver said. "If we can make that through different peoples' causes, like Chris Howell‘s foundation, then we’ve done our part."

Garcia spoke of the need across North Texas 

“The fact that we are more than a year into this pandemic, and we are weeks after the storm — both factors together, definitely created a bigger need I think,” she said.  

Howell said there is a big need for events like this. Previous storm relief drives each served about 1,200 people.

Howell said the winter relief drives will continue until the end of the month, and will be in Tarrant County next week.

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