On a typical Monday night, around 90 families line up at the North Berwick Food Pantry to pick out a week’s worth of food. This week, 134 families showed up — the highest number the volunteer-run pantry has ever seen.

Since the federal government shutdown began, some of the roughly 10 new families coming in each week include Portsmouth Naval Shipyard employees who are working without pay, food pantry Executive Director Pam Landrigan said.

“This is not the norm for them,” she said of the shipyard workers. “They’ve never gone to a food pantry, and now they find themselves in a situation where they have to.”

As the shutdown drags on, assistance programs in southern York County are seeing more calls for help with food, fuel and utilities from federal workers. That increase coincides with higher demand because of changes to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program that have reduced or eliminated benefits for thousands of Mainers.

And with the recent announcement that the U.S. Department of Agriculture will not fund SNAP benefits in November, food pantries are bracing for a surge of people in need of help.

Landrigan said the fear of not having enough food for everyone keeps her up at night.

“It’s like the biblical story of the loaves and fishes. We are somehow miraculously providing people with a week’s worth of food, with our numbers climbing every week,” she said. “I don’t know how we do it.”

The government shutdown began on Oct. 1 after lawmakers could not agree on a temporary budget. Workers deemed essential — like many of the 7,700 shipyard employees — are working without pay.

Maine officials announced last week that the federal government has warned them that it is not distributing SNAP benefits in November because of the ongoing government shutdown. That means that nearly 170,000 Mainers will not receive monthly benefits, putting more pressure on food pantries that are already grappling with federal funding cuts and an increase in demand because of rising grocery prices.

Maine Attorney General Aaron Frey on Tuesday joined a coalition of 22 other attorneys general and three governors in filing a lawsuit against the USDA and Secretary Brooke Rollins, accusing them of unlawfully suspending SNAP.

“42 million Americans, including 169,000 Mainers, are going to go hungry this Thanksgiving because the administration is simply refusing to use the billions available to prevent this,” Frey said in a statement. “It is unconscionably cruel and unlawful.”

Also on Tuesday, Maine Sen. Henry Ingwersen, D-Arundel, led a group of more than 80 state lawmakers in sending a letter to Rollins asking the USDA to release contingency funds for SNAP.

“Maine has the highest rate of food insecurity for children in New England, and every Mainer should have enough food to get through the day,” Ingwersen and the legislators said in the letter. “Some of us may take a good meal for granted, but thousands of Mainers certainly do not.”

Alana Schaeffer, president of the Portsmouth Metal Trades Council, the largest union representing shipyard workers, said nearly every employee on the base is required to report to work without pay.

“The reality is simple and unacceptable: thousands of dedicated federal employees are performing mission-critical work with no paycheck in sight,” Schaeffer said in an email Tuesday. “Many are now struggling to cover gas to get to work, pay for child care, and afford basic necessities. Morale is deteriorating quickly and families are being pushed to their limits.”

Schaeffer said the community has rallied around workers to help with food assistance and emergency relief, but “those efforts are stopgaps.”

“What workers need most is the pay they have rightfully earned,” she said.

At Kittery’s Footprints Market food pantry and Mainspring social services collective, calls from shipyard workers started as soon as the shutdown began.

Footprints Executive Director Megan Shapiro Ross said the pantry has seen a 67% year-over-year increase in clients through the beginning of October. Since the shutdown started, 47 new households comprising 467 people have made their first visits to the pantry.

More than 20 of those new families include federal workers, but Footprints staff say it’s likely an undercount because they didn’t start asking if new clients were furloughed until two weeks into the shutdown.

Melissa Schott, a case manager with Mainspring and Fair Tide, said calls from federal workers asking about resources “just in case” spiked as soon as the shutdown started. From Oct. 1-23, she received 47 calls about services, compared to 14 in the same period last year.

“When the news about SNAP benefits being withheld in November made its way through the community, those ‘just in case’ callers circled back to me, motivated by the fear that their children will go hungry while they fight to cover housing and heat,” Schott said. “Folks are really worried about how they can afford to go to the grocery store and pay rent and stay warm this month.”

Schott said many of the families she hears from are feeling a lot of anxiety about SNAP and uncertainty about how they will pay for everything from home heating fuel to winter gear. The Thanksgiving holiday weighs heavily on their minds, she said.

“Our clients are worried that the funding for remaining resources will be used before they can get help,” she said.

As word of the shutdown and SNAP impacts spread, Footprints has seen a surge in support from community members donating both food and money. The pantry serves people from across the seacoast region and will have to expand staffing and hours to keep up with demand, Schott said.

“We really need people to come together to support us financially,” she said.

In North Berwick, Landrigan is also seeing support from the community and hopes that continues beyond the holiday season. She’s already thinking about how to help families for Thanksgiving and how to keep up with what she expects to be unprecedented demand for food in the coming months.

“There’s going to be a major impact for folks,” she said. “If they’re not getting paid and can’t afford groceries, they’re certainly not going to be able to put Thanksgiving dinner on the table.”