“We seek opportunities that leverage our unique capabilities, reach and relationships to make a positive and lasting impact on the communities where we live and work,” said Colleen Lucas, Vice President of Corporate Social Responsibility at Anheuser-Busch. “Our emergency drinking water program is the perfect embodiment of this formula, as it activates our vast production and distribution capabilities and our expansive network of wholesaler partners. We’re proud to share this program with the National Volunteer Fire Council and continue supporting its heroic volunteers across the country.”
In addition to the emergency drinking water program, the Anheuser-Busch Foundation has also recently donated $200,000 to the NVFC in support of our nation’s first responders. With volunteers comprising 67% of firefighters in the United States, they are local communities’ first line of defense in a range of emergencies. The pandemic underscored the importance of volunteer responders even more as they continued to be there for their communities, putting their own health at risk while often operating with limited resources and staffing.
With Hurricane Ida being described as one of the worst hurricanes — if not the worst — to hit Louisiana since 1850, Anheuser-Busch is delivering six truckloads – more than 300,000 cans – of emergency drinking water to local communities in Mississippi and Lousiana in support of recovery efforts following Hurricane Ida.
Last week, two truckloads of emergency drinking water were mobilized to Anheuser-Busch wholesaler partners, Mitchell Beverage Gulf Coast (Gulfport, Miss.) and Southern Beverage Co., Inc (Richland, Miss.) to support Red Cross relief efforts as they prepared for the expected impact of the storm.
This week, four additional truckloads of emergency drinking water are being delivered to wholesaler partners, Mockler Beverage Co. Inc (Baton Rouge, La.) and Schilling Distributing Co. (Lafayette, La) who will work alongside the American Red Cross to distribute the resources to those in need.
The clean, safe drinking water was produced at Anheuser-Busch’s Cartersville, Ga., and Fort Collins, Colo., breweries which periodically pause beer production throughout the year to can emergency drinking water to help communities in times of disaster.
Anheuser-Busch has a longstanding tradition of providing support for disaster relief efforts in partnership with the American Red Cross, dating back to the San Francisco Earthquake of 1906. Since the inception of the emergency drinking water program in 1988, Anheuser-Busch and its wholesaler partners have provided more than 86 million cans of water to U.S. communities affected by natural disasters and other crises.
Last year alone, Anheuser-Busch donated more than 3 million cans to communities and volunteer fire departments across 43 states in support of ongoing relief efforts including wildfire and hurricane recovery on the West and Gulf coasts.
Most recently, Anheuser-Busch also delivered nearly 1.3 million cans of emergency drinking water to support local communities in Texas following the severe winter storm, more than 100,000 cans to support ongoing wildfire relief efforts on the West Coast, and 70,000 cans to support preparedness efforts ahead of Hurricane Henri.
In a related development, A-B said that for the third consecutive year it was partnering with the National Volunteer Fire Council to donate 1.5 million cans of clean drinking water to more than 420 volunteer fire departments across 48 states.