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Survivalist spends 45 years filling huge basement with food — then decides Puerto Ricans need it more
Survivalist spends 45 years filling huge basement with food — then decides Puerto Ricans need it more
(about 5 hours later)
Joseph Badame was a lonely man, still grieving his wife’s death.
A grieving widower survivalist and a young Puerto Rican couple have found a way to turn tragedy into hope.
And then he lost everything.
Forty barrels, filled with over 300 pounds of food each are making their way to Puerto Rico after Joseph Badame ran into Victoria Barber at an estate sale where bankers were selling of Mr Badame’s New Jersey home. The food — amassed over 45 years as Mr Badame prepared with his late wife for a potential national or international crisis — were not for sale, and the 74-year-old was concerned it would all get tossed.
Buried in debt because of eight years of medical bills and lost income, he could not prevent banks from foreclosing on his custom-built New Jersey home — an 8,500-square-foot fortress with separate living quarters for multiple families, plus a massive basement equipped with bunk beds, propane- and kerosene-powered refrigerators, laundry facilities and showers.
But on the day of the estate sale, Ms Barber was in the market for massive food donations: Just the day before, Hurricane Maria made landfall on Puerto Rico, leaving most of the island without food, water, and reliable food supplies — including Ms Barber’s hometown. She and her husband Anthony had started a fund out of their food truck for donations to help, but she was not expecting to come across a stash of supplies as big as what Mr Badame had to offer.
The basement also included a fallout shelter.
"I'm having trouble putting it into words, but it was just lifesaving for my family," Ms Barber told The Independent. "There were 70 barrels filled with food when my entire family was completely devastated from the hurricane, and in dire need of help. So, it was, like, this miracle."
Badame and his wife, Phyliss, were survivalists who stocked up on everything: dry food, generators, fuel, survival books, thousands of rolls of toilet paper — all to keep them alive in the event of a disaster or some other crisis.
Ms Barber’s hometown, Arecibo - just west of San Juan - was devastated by Hurricane Maria alongside much of Puerto Rico.
But Phyliss, who came up with the idea of prepping, is now gone. Other family members never really supported the endeavor, and there aren’t many of them left to help or save anyway.
Water remains scarce there more than two weeks after the storm made landfall, and temperatures are have exceeded 110 degrees Fahrenheit. Hospitals remain on emergency power with no air conditioning. An official at the hospital there says they are at least 49 dead from “indirect deaths” related to the storm — those who have had heart attacks but not been able to get adequate care, those who fell from roofs expecting damage, people on kidney dialysis machines that failed, for example.
And Badame, the 74-year-old widower, is being evicted from the house in Medford, N.J.
“We have not heard from my grandmother since Tuesday about 8:30 am. Since then we learned she was on her roof waiting to be rescued because floods were 10 feet high,” Ms Barber wrote on the GoFundMe page she set up to help. “My home town is gone, my family are all displaced. My heart is broken.”
Forty-five years of prepping seemed to have been for nothing, he said.
Ms Barber said that each barrel has enough food to feed 84 people for up to four months. The first shipment, due to arrive Saturday, will be taken off of the private plane it was sent on and brought directly to her town on trucks. The flight was volunteered to them, so they just need to pay the truck drivers. The next shipment will cost about $175 a barrel to fly over, and will occur in a few weeks.
That changed last month, when he met a couple who run a Puerto Rican food truck in Medford.
The shipment will help out quite a bit: So far, she's only aware of her family receiving one box of food.
Victoria and Anthony Barber were everything Joseph Badame was not anymore — young, energetic and full of life.
"I know that they did receive a box. They waited in line for eight hours to receive a box of food, and they were very grateful, you could hear it in their voices," she said. "Happy to have oatmeal. Happy to have cans of Chef Boyardee."
They met during an estate sale of Badame’s belongings. The company facilitating it had asked the Barbers to provide food for prospective buyers.
Mr Badame had developed the stockpile alongside his wife, Phyllis, after they returned to the US from stints in the Peace Corps in the 1970s. That time was particularly volatile in South Jersey, where they lived, with race riots erupting in Camden, leading to an exodus of white families out of that city after one in 1971 after a Puerto Rican man was killed by two white police officers.
Badame learned that Victoria is from Puerto Rico, and that Hurricane Maria had left some of her relatives without food.
The Badames moved a bit further away from Camden two years after that riot, and over the years had built a large home equipped to withstand a major crisis, should one happen.
So he told her about the food supply in his basement — and said she could have all of it.
But Phyllis had a massive stroke that left her paralyzed in 2005. Mr Badame had to quit his job to care for her, and he went broke. His wife died in 2013 after another stroke. Mr Badame received his eviction notice last month, after defaulting on mortgage and tax payments.
“I can’t put into words just how much food there was,” she said. “It was enough to feed a town.”
Faced with that tragedy, the opportunity to help Puerto Rico has given him a new sense of purpose.
In the basement were 80 barrels, each weighing 360 pounds.
“I’m tired, old, depressed, feeling like I’m a failure regarding the survival thing,” he told the Washington Post. Then she “came along, gave me a shot of adrenaline. I couldn’t believe it.”
They were filled with bags of rice, flour, sugar, dried beans, pancake and chocolate mixes, seeds and lots of other things that do not spoil and are easy to prepare.
The food that the Badames had intended to eat in case of crisis will now feed starving people in two Puerto Rican towns devastated by Hurricane Maria.
“Those people are starving and they have nothing,” he said. “I just can’t sit by.”
Half of those barrels, along with pallets of bottled water and dried milk, will be flown to San Juan on Friday, Barber said.
Private trucks will then deliver the goods to her home town, Arecibo, a coastal city 45 miles west of San Juan.
The food will feed dozens of families.
The rest of the supplies are still in Badame’s basement, but the Barbers eventually plan to deliver them to another part of Puerto Rico, to feed even more families.
Badame does not consider himself a doomsday prepper.
“I think that’s a little severe,” he told The Washington Post. “I’d say we’re more like Boy Scouts. Being prepared.”
He had spent years preparing for a massive economic crisis coupled with war or violence, he said — but not a biblical or apocalyptic scenario.
He and Phyliss became survivalists in the 1970s, when they returned to New Jersey after spending two years with the Peace Corps in Tunisia. Violent race riots engulfed Camden in 1969.
More riots erupted two years later, following the beating and death of a Puerto Rican motorist at the hands of two white police officers. Looting and arson destroyed downtown Camden; many residents, most of them white, moved elsewhere.
“Phyliss decided that we needed to prepare,” Badame said.
In 1973, they moved from Pennsauken Township to Medford, where Badame began building their giant house.
He and Phyliss tried to convince relatives and friends that bad times were coming and made a list of 100 people they would welcome into their fortress when bad times hit.
Many of them laughed at the endeavor. Still, Badame, an architectural engineer, designed the house to be big enough for all of them and stocked up. Over the years, Badame estimates that he and Phyliss spent $1 million on their effort.
The massive economic crisis never struck, at least not on the scale he and Phyliss had anticipated.
But, he said, it’s only a matter of time.
The Badames were prepared to survive a national or international crisis.
But then a personal one struck: In 2005, Phyliss had a massive stroke that left her paralyzed. She died after another stroke in 2013, Joseph said.
He had quit his job and spent years taking care of his wife — and he was broke. He paid bills with credit cards and defaulted on his mortgage and tax payments, he said.
Last month, he received his eviction notice.
“I was devastated,” he said. “There was no reason for me to continue the survival center. I just didn’t have a purpose in life.”
Then, he met Victoria Barber.
Hurricane Maria made landfall on Puerto Rico on Sept. 20, a Wednesday.
The following day, ahead of the estate sale, Badame met the Barbers.
At the time, he had not been able to figure out what to do with all the supplies he had in his basement.
Local food banks wanted them, but they had no means of transporting the massive barrels. Badame was dreading that his food reserves, which were not included in the estate sale, would just be thrown away.
“I don’t know what would’ve happened to me if that final insult was placed upon me,” he said.
Barber had just started a donation drive to help feed more than 50 family members in Puerto Rico.
Badame was the first to donate; he gave $100.
Then he showed her his basement.
She expected to see a small pantry and said she would have been grateful for a case of beans.
Instead, she saw stacks of barrels.
Barber and her husband spent the next week raising money to transport the barrels. Badame helped, too, and wore a red T-shirt: “#PRSTRONG” it said, with a heart below it.
Members of the local police department and a high school soccer team helped carry the supplies out of the basement, and the barrels were repacked so that each contained a variety of dried goods.
By Wednesday, 40 of Badame’s barrels were on wooden pallets, covered in plastic wrap, waiting to be delivered to Puerto Rico on a Delta Air Lines flight out of Newark. Barber said they plan to deliver the remaining 40 barrels by ship.
“This is lifesaving,” she said. “What Joe has done for me, I could never pay back. I told him that. He prepared for one group of people, but he ended up helping an entire town.”
Badame said it was his own life that was saved.
“I’m tired, old, depressed, feeling like I’m a failure regarding the survival thing,” he said. Then Barber “came along, gave me a shot of adrenaline. I couldn’t believe it.”
Badame and Barber each gained something they didn’t have.
He doesn’t have children; her own father died when she was young.
