By Isaac Babcock
Observer Staff

Alan Addis sold his home three years ago preparing to move to Haiti. But he doesn't know when, and he doesn't know how. Right now, at 9:30 a.m. inside a Sanford warehouse the size of a football field, he's just doing whatever he can to help his home away from home.

"I came here a week and a half ago, and I haven't really left," Addis said, standing inside a warehouse full of food and supplies bound for Haiti. It's 55 degrees outside and he's sweating through his orange camp shirt. His gloves look a little worn, but in between grunts while pulling a pallet jack he cracks a smile.

"I used to be a paint contractor in Idaho," he said. Three years before an earthquake sent buildings toppling into the streets of Port-au-Prince, Addis already knew his life's calling. He'd since returned three times to help orphans. Today, he's a volunteer, helping from afar.

Mulling around him in the warehouse of Harvest International in Sanford, a few dozen volunteers sort bags by the hundreds. Just behind them, massive shelves tower 30 feet high full of food and water. It looks like the storage room at the end of "Raiders of the Lost Ark," but all of this could be gone in days, headed south for Miami, then onto a ship to Haiti's battered capital.

Addis is constantly on the move, just like the large colony of ant-like workers swarming behind him. Everybody has a job here, picking through clothes as they sort baby sizes from toddler sizes from kid sizes from adult sizes, or maybe figuring out what food is expired and what isn't.

Halfway across the warehouse Jason Hall drags a walk-in freezer-sized box full of allergy medicine and puts it next to a pallet of bandages next to a box of crutches and a foot brace.

Zipping back and forth between all this, Lena Smolinsky makes sure everybody knows what they're doing. Along with her husband Andre, they're coordinating one of the most massive disaster-aid projects in Florida. That's on top of what they already do. At Harvest International, disaster mitigation is all in a day's work. But in the last week, it's taken on epic proportions.

"It's been totally crazy here," she said. "This is definitely a learning process."

A quick process, too, as trucks arrive hourly with more donations. As of 9 a.m. Thursday the charity had already sent out four shipping containers full of goods. By the end of the week, they were expecting three more to be headed south.

Some are flying out of Sanford Orlando International as she speaks, bound for the overworked airport in Haiti's capital.

Outside in the parking lot, Mike Philips checks his supply of water purifiers — tiny devices that fit on top of a water bottle that create purifying hydrogen peroxide and chlorine by the gallon.

"It'll purify 10,000 gallons in an hour," he said.

Tomorrow morning, he'll be on the ground in Haiti delivering 100 of the tiny lifesavers.

Back inside an air-conditioned office next to the warehouse, Smolinsky talks to her husband Andre about logistics. Andre, the chief operating officer of the nonprofit, sifts through a cluttered desk looking for numbers.

"We have trucks coming from everywhere, all over Florida," he said.

That's when Harvest International comes into play, sorting through tons of donations and sending them where they need to go.

"There's just an enormous volume of donations," volunteer Yvonne Cooley said. She first arrived at the warehouse yesterday, never having volunteered to ship disaster supplies. Today, she came back again.

"My back hurt yesterday, but it's fine now," she said.

One day, she said, she too hopes to go to Haiti to help. For now, she's sifting diapers from baby food, happy to be making a difference.

"I'm here to do whatever I can," she said. "I'll be here every day."

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Volunteer your time

Harvest Time International, a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization at 225 N. Kennel Road in Sanford, is looking for volunteers to help sort disaster relief supplies bound for Haiti. Sign up for a shift by visiting www.harvest-time.org and clicking on “volunteer”, or you can call 407-328-9900 extension 128 for the volunteer services coordinator.