Volunteers feeding fire refugees with a hefty side of caring.
CHICO — The smell of homemade chili wafted through the makeshift headquarters of World Central Kitchen on Tuesday, temporarily replacing the stench of smoke from the Camp Fire that has plagued the area for almost two weeks.
Outside the kitchen where the chili was simmering, an assembly line of 30 or so volunteers built sandwiches. On one table, 13-year-old Willow Kelly folded up pieces of ham, while her cousin Kya Anker, 13, topped them with a piece of American cheese. Behind them, Janet Ford, 62, lined up pieces of wheat bread, while Valerie White, 67, dolloped on the “secret sauce.”
Today’s quota: 3,000 sandwiches. By 9:45 a.m., they already had 1,000.
“You guys are doing great work!” the lead coordinator, Ramiro Arevalo, yelled to the room.
For more than a week, World Central Kitchen, a disaster relief organization, has occupied the kitchen of Italian Guy Catering in Chico to deploy food all around Butte County — from three Red Cross evacuation centers to parking lots, even to a post office where evacuated residents stand in line for hours to get their mail.
On Wednesday, the organization will join Sierra Nevada Brewing Co. and the town of Paradise in preparing Thanksgiving dinner for an estimated 15,000 evacuees and first responders at three sites in Chico, at an event called Thanksgiving Together.
Thanksgiving will mark two weeks since the devastating Camp Fire began, nearly demolishing Paradise and other communities nearby. The fire is the most destructive and deadliest in California history. Dozens of people were killed, and tens of thousands have been displaced.
Preparing food for the survivors and first responders has been an enormous undertaking. The Salvation Army is feeding people at its shelters, while local food banks and homeless shelters have increased the quantity of free groceries and meals they normally provide.
Founded during the 2010 Haiti earthquake by Washington, D.C., chef Jose Andres, World Central Kitchen has become a global organization contracted by the Red Cross. When a disaster hits, ravages a community and displaces hordes of residents, the organization knows what to do: go to the scene, find the shelters, buy the food from local businesses and find volunteers in the community.
“Food is hope. Food is comfort. Food is memories,” Arevalo said. That’s what they are trying to deliver.
World Central Kitchen currently is feeding those displaced by the Fuego volcanic eruption in Guatemala, in addition to its work in Northern California, where the organization has served an estimated 60,000 meals since setting up in Chico. Arevalo said they’ve worked with about 2,000 volunteers in the past few days, from all over: Chico, Red Bluff, San Francisco, Tiburon. San Francisco chef Tyler Florence has been part of the effort, too.
Every disaster they go to is an unbelievable tragedy, Arevalo said, but fires make for particularly difficult logistics. Unlike with hurricanes, groups like his don’t have a week or so to set up and prepare. Fires hit suddenly and can ferociously spread from an unlucky gust of wind. And unlike earthquakes, some fires — like the Camp Fire — just keep going and going.
The living situation in shelters went from difficult to worse last week when over 145 people in four different shelters experienced gastrointestinal illness that the Butte County Public Health Department determined was norovirus, which can spread quickly in cramped living spaces.
All the more need for restorative foods. In the catering kitchen on Tuesday, one volunteer chopped cauliflower, while others shoveled rice into tin pans and topped them with chicken, piccata sauce and slices of lemon. Outside, volunteers cooked chicken in big paella pans.
Another group of volunteers loaded trucks with aluminum trays piled with the chicken, and coolers full of soup and chili. One truck was going to the Toys R Us parking lot where displaced residents have been spending their days. Another was headed to Sears.
The ethos here is quality ingredients. Sandwiches have a bit of sugar in the sauce to give the firefighters energy, chefs said. And for their digestive systems, salad and other foods are purposely made with a little bit of acidity.
For Thanksgiving, the chefs are going with traditional dishes with creative flourishes, like roast turkey with cranberry-orange-mint sauce, cornbread stuffing, and green beans sauteed with marsala and sliced almonds. First responders are invited to the Thanksgiving meals. Jason Collis, chef and team lead with the Chico effort, said California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection workers who have the day off are going to help serve, too.
“It’s not just giving them food. We want to make it a special experience for them,” Collis said. “Basically, it’s like they’re sitting down at a restaurant and having a nice meal that brings back their dignity.”
For those who are doubled or tripled up at nearby friends’ and families’ homes rather than staying in evacuation centers, local food banks are increasing what they offer.
“The big machines that happen during disasters — the Red Cross, Salvation Army — their evacuation centers have what they need,” said Thomas Dearmore, community services manager of the Community Action Agency of Butte County in Chico, which normally supplies 52 food pantries in the area. “It’s the families that we’re trying to serve that are kind of forgotten.”
Dearmore, who with his wife is hosting three families in trailers on their property, said the agency is accepting shelf-stable food donations for Thanksgiving. Donations are flowing in, including pallets of diapers, and Dearmore said organizations, including the Hope Center in Oroville, which provides free meals and groceries to those in need, are working well together.
“No one’s keeping score about who gets what,” he said. “I’m blown away by the cooperation.”
In addition to food banks, local residents who receive CalFresh — commonly known as food stamps — can get their benefits replaced if the food they purchased with them was destroyed because of fire or power outages, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. They can also use CalFresh benefits to purchase hot foods during the disaster.
During last October’s Wine Country fires, Bay Area chefs who prepared food for victims had to learn a lot about mobilizing, said Traci Des Jardins, who helped coordinate more than 46,000 donated meals from other restaurants out of a catering kitchen in San Francisco’s Presidio, near two of her restaurants. She said it would be wise to create better systems for coordinating volunteers and donations in advance of disasters to prevent confusion and waste.
“Everyone wants to participate,” she said. “It would be really beneficial, as we move forward with the new normal, to make sure people can get involved in meaningful ways.”