Anheuser-Busch Delivers More Than 103,000 Cans of Water To Assist Pike County In Kentucky, Following Flooding

(UPDATE: When it became clear that more water was needed in the area, Anheuser-Busch arranged for an additional two truckloads of water that were delivered on Saturday, July 24, bringing the total donation to more than 206,000 cans).

ST. LOUIS (July 21, 2010) – Anheuser-Busch is providing 4,312 cases — or more than 103,000 cans of drinking water — for use by Kentucky residents affected by heavy rains and flooding in Pike County that forced the closure of the water treatment plant in Pikeville.

The first truckload of water left Anheuser-Busch’s Cartersville, Ga., brewery last night and is scheduled to arrive this afternoon at 5:30 p.m. to Expo Center, 126 Main Street in Pikeville, Ky. A second truck with an additional 2,156 cases will leave this afternoon and is scheduled to arrive tomorrow.

The Salvation Army and the Red Cross will distribute the water to an estimated 10,000 residents in Pikeville, Ky., and surrounding areas affected by the water outage. The water was requested by the local Budweiser distributor, Perry Distributors, Inc. in Hazard.

Anheuser-Busch and its distributors provided a total of 210,042 cases — or more than 5 million cans — of packaged drinking water to victims of natural disasters in 2008 and 2009. These included wildfires in California; hurricanes and storms in Florida, Louisiana, Alabama, Mississippi and Texas; and flooding in New York, Iowa, Indiana, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri and Wisconsin.

Since 1988, Anheuser-Busch has donated more than 69 million cans of drinking water following natural and other disasters.

Helping communities cope with disasters has been an Anheuser-Busch tradition since 1906 when Adolphus Busch made a donation to victims of the San Francisco earthquake. Today, in addition to providing monetary support, Anheuser-Busch packages fresh drinking water and donates it to emergency relief organizations for distribution to those in need.