Share the Spirit: Food Bank of Contra Costa and Solano helps Camp Fire survivors rebuild

Dec. 20—There are plenty of images Avalon Glucksman could recount from her early morning escape in 2018 from the deadly Camp Fire — the darkened sky, the frenzied pack-and-go, the sights of her town, Paradise, perishing in flames in her rearview mirror — but she prefers to stick to the positive.

"I don't watch horror movies anymore," Glucksman said. Instead, the 40-year-old and her husband, Rocky, direct their focus to how others have helped them recover from the traumatizing event.

Among the biggest helpers, Glucksman said, are food banks that are keeping the couple and other families afloat two years after the Camp Fire and other destructive blazes that have shaken the West Coast.

One of those is the Food Bank of Contra Costa and Solano. The organization is based in Concord and Fairfield but extends services as far north as Redding. The food bank serves about 270,000 people every month and distributes more than 31 million pounds of food, including fresh produce, each year to people whose incomes fall short and who would otherwise go hungry.

Glucksman is one of the many survivors trying to rebuild their homes in Paradise, which was nearly leveled in the conflagration sparked by PG&E equipment on Nov. 8, 2018. The home was valuable to her husband, so much so that he wanted to stay and save it as the fire neared.

"I had to literally kick him in the butt to get him to the car," Glucksman said.

It was a life-saving move. As the couple sped out of town, they saw what they had narrowly avoided.

"I saw cars on fire with people in them," Glucksman said. "They were literally dying in their cars."

Two years later, Glucksman is neck-deep in the process of rebuilding her house. When she isn't busy dealing with the endless logistics, she still manages to find time and energy to cook food for people staying in temporary housing after escaping wildfires.

It isn't cheap — Glucksman buys the food at grocery stores and relies on the food bank so that there is enough for herself and her husband. Nothing about the healing process is cheap, said one food bank coordinator who called the costs of rebuilding "astronomical."

"You had people who were underinsured because they had lived in Paradise for 50 years," said Lisa Roehling, who manages the local Butte County distribution for the Food Bank of Contra Costa and Solano. "Whether they had insurance or not, the thing that's becoming very obvious is that rebuilding is going to cost a lot more than expected."

Roehling knows firsthand. Her home in Paradise was one of more than 18,000 structures claimed by the Camp Fire, a life blow that she said gives her stronger empathy and know-how when engaging with people who rely on the food bank's services.

"It's easy for me to see that people are on different levels of trying to rebuild," she said. "There was a lot of depression (after the Camp Fire), and COVID hasn't helped."

The Food Bank of Contra Costa and Solano has received funding this year from Share the Spirit, an annual holiday campaign that serves disadvantaged residents in the East Bay. Donations will help support 41 nonprofit agencies in Contra Costa and Alameda counties. The grant will be used to reach more people to provide healthy meals during the pandemic and help with transportation and operations.

As wildfires have upended lives across the West Coast, survivors have learned the hard way that the path to recovery is difficult to navigate. When the coronavirus pandemic became a daily reality, food bank coordinators say they had to scramble to meet even higher demand.

"Our service went up dramatically during the pandemic; it increased people being aware of us," said Rachel Braver, the organization's marketing manager in the Bay Area. "We went from being a place for hypothetical 'hungry people' to the people who help your neighbor that lost their job and can't pay rent."

David Turnbow, a Camp Fire survivor, said he and his wife look to the food bank for meals throughout the week. It's a way of saving money and energy that he has had to put toward recovery. The fire claimed the back of his house, along with his work truck, which he had rebuilt years before the fire. It was his "baby," he said, a most valuable possession. Turnbow was at work in Chico when he heard Paradise was burning. He and his wife are both volunteer firefighters, but in this case, they knew to quickly get as far from town as possible.

He later learned from neighbors that a firefighter with a bulldozer had plowed away his garage, saving the rest of his house from burning down. Despite his efforts, Turnbow has not been able to track down the person who saved his home. He said it's "hard mentally" to continue living in a town forever marked by a disaster. Other houses that once stood on his block are gone for good. Being able to pick up free, prepackaged meals from the food bank gives him one less thing to worry about.

"It's good for a few meals," he said. "It helps with the day-to-day, week-to-week process of recovery."

As they start to piece together their homes, survivors agree the key is remembering that recovery is a slow process. Sleep on the big decisions, Roehling suggests, even if it means being cooped up in temporary housing for a while.

"Everyone wants that sense of getting back to normal," she said. "We're feeling it all again with COVID. We want to feel normal again. Let yourself feel those emotions, but give it some time. Let yourself ponder before deciding what to do next."

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Share the Spirit

The Share the Spirit holiday campaign, sponsored by the Bay Area News Group, funds nonprofit holiday and outreach programs in Alameda and Contra Costa counties.

To make a tax-deductible contribution, clip the coupon accompanying this story or go to www.sharethespiriteastbay.org/donate. Readers with questions, and people or businesses interested in making grants or contributions, may contact the Share the Spirit program at 925-472-5760 or [email protected].

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