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“This is a great feeling,” said Ortiz, an Ohio Attorney General employee who is the diversity liaison to the Ohio Peace Officer Training Academy in London, Ohio.
Food, water, and cleaning supplies were among items collected, he said. “You name it, it was there,” Ortiz said. “People came out in droves to help.”
The truck will head to a Convoy of Hope warehouse in Missouri and be shipped from there to Puerto Rico, he said.
“We’re all affected by it so we’re trying to do all we can,” he said.
Ortiz, who has family who live in Puerto Rico, said his relatives were “surviving” after Hurricane Maria struck the U.S. territory, the second since Hurricane Irma sideswiped the island weeks before the latest powerful storm caused widespread damage.
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His family remained without power and lacked food and water, he said.
“Everything’s wiped out,” he said. “All of them lost their business. They’re just stuck up in the mountains living off the mountain.”
The Convoy of Hope is collecting aid though out Ohio from Cincinnati to Cleveland, he said. People in those cities are continuing to work with the convoy project, but their participation has not yet been confirmed.
The need remains great: Less than 20 percent of island residents have had their power restored since the storm and the death toll has climbed to nearly 50.
As many as one million Puerto Ricans do not have clean water to drink and many hospitals continue to operate on generator power as the tropical heat soars.
— WHIO-TV’s Kate Bartley contributed to this report.
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