Stepping Up to Help with Fire Relief

We are tremendously grateful for the generosity of our partners during this catastrophic time for Butte County. In response to the fire, CAFB partners contributed both produce and shelf stable items, along with the cost to deliver the items.

We would like to recognize:

• Food Bank of Contra Costa and Solano County’s (FBCCS) and the Community Action Agency of Butte County for their coordination and distribution efforts.

• Stanislaus Food Products provided a pallet of prepared pasta sauce in addition to400lbs of purchased pasta they purchased providing meals for both first responders and evacuees.

• Backpacker’s Pantry, in Boulder, Colo., contributed three pallets of shelf-stable, just-add-water meals this week.  

• Lundberg Farms will be donating a full truckload of shelf-stable, ready-to-eat rice snacks to FBCCS’s direct distribution in Butte County. CAFB is very appreciative of their willingness to hold the donation until FBCCS’s capacity is ready for replenishment.  

• Kings River Packing, Prima Frutta Packing, and Greene and Hemly are donating a truckload of hand-held fruit. —  shout out to Pacific Connection who will cover the cost of the freight and Pacheco Trucking who was able to haul the load.

In these times of deep need, we are grateful to see our partners and members come together to provide this crucial assistance and help support and strengthen our community.

CDSS received federal approval for emergency CalFresh waivers:

• Automatic Mass Replacement Benefits Waiver has been approved for Butte County as of November 19, 2018

• Timely Reporting of Food Loss Waiver has been approved for Butte, Ventura, and Los Angeles counties as of November 16, 2018. The Timely Reporting Waiver approval will allow households in these affected counties to make a request for replacement of CalFresh benefits through December 10, 2018.  These replacement SNAP benefits will allow households to replace food lost due to power outages and evacuations resulting from the Camp and Woolsey Fires. Attached is the waiver approval.

• Hot Foods Waiver has been approved for Butte, Colusa, Glenn, Kern, Los Angeles, Orange, Plumas, Tehama, Santa Barbara, San Bernardino, San Luis Obispo, Sutter, Yuba, and Ventura Counties as of November 17, 2018. The Hot Foods Waiver will allow hot foods to be purchased at SNAP authorized retailers has been approved through December 17, 2018. Please be aware that retailers may need as much as 24-36 hours to make changes that will allow for sale of hot foods.  Please set appropriate expectations when messaging hot foods availability to SNAP participants. As a reminder, CDSS will post these and other materials about the disaster on their D-CalFresh website.

We are in communication with CDSS regarding Disaster CalFresh and should know more about its potential implementation soon.

For all updates, see: https://www.cdss.ca.gov/inforesources/CalFresh/Disaster-CalFresh

(Photo by Nick Precision at English Wikipedia)