North Side Firefighter Collecting Bottled Water for Flint, MI Residents

A Chicago firefighter has started an online fundraising campaign and is collecting bottled water for beleaguered Flint, MI, whose drinking water supply has been found to contain elevated levels of lead.

Eric Washington, who has been a firefighter for about 10 years and works at the North Side Albany Park firehouse in the 4400 block of North Kedize Avenue, told ABC Chicago 7 News he was compelled to act when he saw the crisis unfolding just a four-hour drive away.

“You see this in third world countries. You don’t see this in the United States of America,” Washington said.

At last count, the Chicago firefighter collected about 130 cases of bottled water from colleagues, friends and his former classmates at Hyde Park Academy High School.

His GoFundMe campaign, in which he had hoped to raise $2,000 to purchase 7,300 bottles of drinking water for the residents of Flint, has now exceeded $5,200.

Washington will be holding a bottled water drive at his alma mater, Hyde Park Academy, 6220 S Stony Island Ave., Chicago, from 9 a.m. to noon, Jan. 30.

“I’m asking for everyone to drop off a couple cases of water if you can spare it and I’ll be delivering them personally to the residents of Flint myself,” the Chicago firefighter wrote on his GoFundMe page.

Flint’s water supply was switched from Lake Huron to the Flint River, which has a reputation for nastiness, as a cost saving measure in 2014, CNN reported.

Residents there complained that their tap water looked, smelled and tasted funny. Virginia Tech researchers discovered in August high levels of lead contamination. Since the switch from Lake Huron, a local pediatrician said that lead poisoning in toddlers had doubled, and in some cases tripled, according to CNN.

The residents most greatly impacted by the contaminated water are African-Americans living below the poverty line.

“The time for just talking about helping others is over, let’s do something about it,” Washington said. “We can’t be blind to this issue just because it’s not happening to us because it actually could.”

Visit CFD Firefighter Eric Washington’s “Water Drive for Flint, MI” campaign on GoFundMe.