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This time last year, Patti Vernelson’s power was out and, with the Smith River Complex wildfire frolicking just up the canyon, she and other Gasquet residents were under a Level 3 Go Now evacuation order.

Vernelson, who’s on the board of directors for the nonprofit that oversees two local food pantries, said there’s no place in the mountain community to store refrigerated foods, and there’s no community kitchen.

During a breakout session at a North Coast Emergency Food System Partnership virtual meeting on Wednesday, Vernelson said making the food system, and Gasquet itself, more resilient in an emergency is a personal and professional matter to her.

“It was Aug. 20 and lots of people had gardens. They had food that could be harvested, but there was nobody to harvest it,” she said. “And we had people who had to stay, like water department people and the fire department. If we had a system in place to have people go harvest everybody’s vegetables or fruit and we had a place to cook or bring it, it would change everything.”

The lightning-caused wildfires — and the countywide blackout that accompanied them — occurred less than a year after the Del Norte and Adjacent Tribal Lands Community Food Council began working on a six-county effort to improve people’s access to food during a disaster. Funded through a $1.5 million grant from the USDA Regional Food Systems Partnership Program, the goal in Del Norte County is to establish an emergency feeding plan by its end date of Sept. 29, 2025.

The Food Council also aims to create a task force that’s responsible for coordinating resources during a disaster and during “blue sky times,” Project Manager Iya Mahan told the Wild Rivers Outpost.

Local partners include Pacific Pantry, the Food Council’s food bank, which operates through the Family Resource Center of the Redwoods. The Del Norte Office of Emergency Services and Department of Health and Human Services are also partners as are the Tolowa Dee-ni’ Nation and the Yurok Tribe.

The FRC Board provides fiscal oversight for the Food Council, Pacific Pantry and its mobile market, Vernelson said.

“We pay local farmers to get eggs, yogurt, fish and produce and the mobile market goes to Klamath, to Gasquet and to Smith River once a month and distributes food,” she said. “People choose what they want. Our FRC Board is the basically the fiscal oversight for the food bank and the pantry and I really care because I was evacuated for two weeks last year.”

The UC Cooperative Extension is spearheading the regional project. Its partners include the North Coast Growers Association, Petaluma Bounty, Humboldt Community Organizations Active In Disaster (COAD) as well as the Food Council.

Project Director Julia Van Soelen Kim of the UC Cooperative Extension said an emergency food system provides a safety net on a day-to-day basis, as well as during a crisis. This also takes into account local procurement — how to incorporate community farmers and food producers into the safety net —as well as how to build capacity.

As of Wednesday, according to Kim, the Food Council in Del Norte County had completed eight focus groups that included local tribes as well as the Hmong and LatinX communities.

Another round of focus groups will be held in the fall, Kim said.

According to Mahan, the community’s experience during the Smith River Complex wildfires, and Pacific Power’s decision to cut the only transmission line serving Del Norte County, played a significant role in how the Food Council approached the emergency food systems project.

When the fires began in August 2023, the Food Council was gearing up for its first round of focus groups. Representatives knew who the stakeholders were, but hadn’t met with them yet. However, realizing the Food Council needed to act, volunteers distributed emergency food boxes and, thanks to a Humboldt Area Foundation grant, camp stoves.

“They were especially for communities that didn’t get power until the very end,” Mahan said. “Fort Dick, Klamath and Smith River were all last, so we tried to get stoves out to the people who needed them.”

The Food Council and the FRC became a distribution hub for people to access food, working with the Office of Emergency Services to get the word out. Donations of food and local produce came from Fred Meyer, Humboldt COAD and North Coast Growers' Association's Harvest Hub. People were also able to access bedding, toiletries and clothing in addition to food, Mahan said.

During the focus groups following the disaster, Mahan said stories ranged from seniors who were stranded at home with no electricity for days before someone checked on them. This made her realize that any emergency feeding plan has include those with special needs.

However, smaller community support is just as important as an overall community plan, she said.

“What we saw a lot in our focus groups when we were debriefing from the Smith River fire is that a lot of neighborhoods came together to share a generator,” she said. “Creating centers in these communities where people know that’s where they can go to find resources, information, food if they need it, and having those places be pre-identified before a disaster, so that when the disaster does come, they know [is important.]”

Like Gasquet, communities in Del Norte County have spaces that could meet that need, but they're not quite developed yet, according to Mahan. Maybe they don't have a commercial kitchen or a working stove or even running water, she said.

Part of an emergency feeding plan would be to create memoranda of understanding with community-based organizations and the Office of Emergency Services to build upon and leverage the resources that do exist, she said. Mahan added that those systems need to be in place before the disaster.

“I feel like we’re really lucky in that sense that we have a very small community,” she said. “We have a community that’s connected, and I think we all saw on the Smith River fire, everybody stepped up to take action and do what they could.”

Once the Food Council and other Del Norte stakeholders draft the emergency feeding plan, they'll test it out, Mahan said. That could come in the form of a tabletop exercise where they plan out a disaster or it could be an actual training where they feed a specific amount of people to make sure it works, she said.

Incorporating local food into the emergency feeding plan is also important. Del Norte could be cut off during a disaster, Mahan said, plus local food is more nutritious and better for the environment.

During a panel discussion that was part of Wednesday’s meeting, Bridgette Finigan, local project manager for the Tolowa Dee-ni’ Nation’s Food Is Good Medicine Program, said the program she works for receives funding through the USDA’s Local Food Purchase Assistance Cooperative.

According to her, the USDA considers food produced within a 400 mile radius of the area the Tolowa Dee-ni’ Nation serves to be local. The Food Is Good Medicine program distributes to 125 households each month. Finigan said the North Coast Growers’ Association’s harvest boxes the program receives by way of the Food Council is a “God-send.”

The program also distributes 1,250 pounds of ground beef each month courtesy of the Foggy Bottoms Boys and works with a farmer in Grants Pass, whose growing season is just two to three months a year.

“It’s nice to support the small guy,” Finigan said. “The little guy who only farms one or two acres and only gets to give us food a couple months out of the year.”

The North Coast Growers Association Director of Cooperative Distribution Megan Kenney said her organization is able to connect individual farmers to those working to curtail food insecurity. However, she also pointed out that making those connections are important before the emergency occurs. This includes figuring out what cold storage and dry storage is available.

“I feel like it’s so important to continue to talk to your local community and local community organizations,” she said.

Mahan pointed out that Pacific Pantry and the Food Council has been purchasing local food, including fresh produce from Ocean Air Farms and milk from Alexandre Dairy, since its inception. But choosing local during an emergency makes the community more resilient.

“It supports our local economy as well,” she said. “Our local producers are not losing out on their business either. They’re still able to sell their product.”

As the Food Council’s emergency feeding plan takes shape, there is a role Del Norters can play. They can sign up for the Community Food Council’s newsletter and if they’re interested in joining a focus group, there’s an online form they can fill out, Mahan said.

Creating a household plan for emergencies is important as well as helping the Food Council identify those who need resources the most, Mahan said.

“Individuals experiencing food insecurity pre-disaster will experience longer lasting effects post disaster and during the disaster or emergency as well,” she said. “The big question I know I sit with a lot is are we reaching the people that we really need to?”

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