Hunger grips a rural community hit by Trump’s cuts

Those on the front lines of feeding their neighbors in West Virginia’s coal country say they face unprecedented challenges brought on by Washington.

DUNLOW, W.Va. — Bill Likens stared down a half-mile-long line of cars that started forming before the sun came up over the Appalachian Mountains. He had one job: figure out how to feed them all.

Some had driven more than 30 miles in aging cars and trucks that wheezed down flood-prone roads through the steep hills. They sat silently as the temperature rose into the 80s, their vehicles turned off with no air conditioning to preserve gas, waiting hours for a few boxes of food.

Aided by a cane, Likens, 51, surveyed the pallets being unloaded off a semitruck that arrived that morning. He counted cartons of eggs and sacks of potatoes to calculate how much each waiting car could get — an algorithm of hunger he is constantly trying to solve.

“There’s a decent chance we could run out,” said Likens, who runs the food pantry in Dunlow as director of community outreach for Cabwaylingo Presbyterian Chapel, a small brick church he attended growing up.

“I don’t want them to sit in that line and not…

Original source: https://www.nbcnews.com/business