We want you to know that if you were evacuated or sheltering evacuated friends and family, the food bank is here for you. We are committed to continuing our Friday drive through distributions and providing CalFresh enrollment support. If one of our distribution locations gets closed off because of the fires or the resulting evacuations, we’ll work hard to ensure we find a new location. You can find a food distribution close to you by calling our Community Food Hotline at (831) 662-0991 or emailing [email protected].
Monetary donations: Second Harvest is able to source food at a significant discount from what it would cost at a grocery store. We will use your funds to purchase the healthy, easy to open, non-perishable foods that evacuees need.
Food donations: Right now our current needs to support fire evacuees are healthy, easy to open, non perishable foods (like canned tuna, peanut butter, crackers, canned fruits, granola bars, etc). Donations can be dropped off at our Watsonville warehouse (800 Ohlone Parkway M – F between 7:30am – 3:30pm). But remember, instead of going out to purchase this food, for every $1 you donate to us, we can purchase nearly $9 worth of food.
Volunteer: At each of our Friday drive through distributions we need about 80 people. This includes Second Harvest staff, our National Guard volunteers, as well as community volunteers. Right now, some of our National Guard volunteers are being trained to combat the fires, so we need even more community volunteers to help us meet the need. The hours are Fridays, 8:30am – 1:15pm, you will need to be there the whole time. Air quality is a concern, and we are monitoring it. If the air quality raises above 151AQI, we recommend using N95 masks. If you have them, please wear them, if not, we will have a limited supply. Sign up to volunteer here. https://www.thefoodbank.org/volunteer/
We are closely monitoring the conditions in our county, and if the state declares it, will be able to assist people with emergency/disaster CalFresh assistance as well. We will keep everyone updated on our social media platforms (Facebook, Instagram and Twitter).
If you need additional information about the SCZ Lightning Complex Fire:
County of Santa Cruz Resources:
http://www.co.santa-cruz.ca.us/FireResources.aspx
Community Resources for food, care and shelter:
https://craft-cfscc-prod.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/AUGUST-Bilingual-Family-Resource-Calendar.pdf