ASHEVILLE — After more than a week without power and water, residents in and around Asheville are invited to wash their clothes for free at a mobile laundry trailer stationed outside St. Lawrence Basilica in Asheville.
With five washers and five dryers available, the “LG Laundry Relief Zone” is open daily from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Provided by LG Electronics in times of disaster, the trailer handled 300 loads of laundry in its first three days, said coordinator Christina Wright.
Users take a walk or sit under tents (with free water and snacks) as they wait for their clothes to spin, and special arrangements can be made for first responders.
The laundry self-service will be onsite indefinitely. Last wash is at 4:30 p.m., and people are currently being limited to two wash loads and one dryer load, to enable as many people as possible to use the service.
“All you need is two things: laundry and patience – everything else is free,” said Wright of Huntsville, Alabama, who says she felt humbled when she got a look at the beauty of the historic basilica and its prime downtown location to serve people.
Wright and three other volunteers – two from Tampa, one from nearby Mars Hill – are overseeing the effort. All have deployed to other flood and hurricane disaster areas before and volunteered for Asheville “because they just knew the need was catastrophic.”
The mobile laundry service is being made possible with help from St. Lawrence Basilica’s music director Andrew Davis. He connected Wright with Greg Shook, owner of Shook’s Construction and Freelance Drilling, who is providing water tanks and a generator to power the facility for free.
“All of us, we know we’re doing good,” Wright said. “People don’t realize, washing your clothes, having clean underwear – these things we take for granted.”
“Parents are coming in to wash their children’s clothes and their own, and the smiles have been amazing. As they collect up clean clothes, they’ll say ‘Whew, my clothes smell clean again!”
— Liz Chandler
