IsraAID helps British flood victims

First response group helping to repair homes and hand out blankets and food in northern city of Leeds

By Sue Surkes

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5 January 2016, 7:39 pm

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Sue Surkes is The Times of Israel's environment reporter

A man wades through flood waters at Hebden Bridge in West Yorkshire, England. (Peter Byrne/PA via AP)

The Israeli humanitarian aid agency IsraAID has sent four volunteers to northern England to help relief teams cope with the effects of massive flooding, the UK’s Jewish Chronicle reported Tuesday.

Another team of five are on standby.

The first response group is already helping to repair homes and hand out blankets and food in Leeds, where more than 1,000 homes were inundated.

“We have responded to 10 floods and tornado disasters in the US and when we saw what was happening to the UK in the news, it looked worse than ever before,” said Shachar Zahavi, founding director of IsraAid.

The organization contacted Jewish communities around northern England who told them which groups were working in flooded areas, Zahavi added.

Jewish communities in Manchester, Leeds and York escaped mostly unscathed from the latest bout of flooding affecting Britain.

But the well-known kosher company Celia Clyne Banqueting’s premises in Bury, Greater Manchester, were flooded. Much of the supplies and equipment had been transferred to Birmingham, where Limmud, a Jewish studies conference, was taking place.

In November, actor Sean Penn lauded IsraAID as a source of inspiration in earthquake-battered Haiti, when he gave the keynote address at a conference organized by the NGO in Tel Aviv.