...in times of disaster
Tornado
What’s it like after a tornado?
When kitchens are gone and refrigeration is compromised we can deliver equipment and our ServSafe certified cooks to serve good safe and hot meals to a community. The fact that local volunteers can come along side our staff and help their neighbors is more than just an added bonus, it’s part of recovery. People have told us in the past how important it was to them to feel that they were helping others when their community and their homes had been destroyed by a tornado. When they didn’t know what was going to happen next in terms of recovery, they could volunteer to help serve food and take a concrete step towards helping themselves and helping others.
Flooding
We have developed “cooking units” for disaster food preparation that can be operated by anyone and pulled into a disaster relief area by anyone using ordinary pickups. Each disaster area has it’s own characteristics. Hot Meals can deliver people and equipment to meet the needs of feeding people no matter the conditions.
Spring 2020 Pandemic Response
Over 100,000 meals were served in the spring of 2020. When much of the world shut down, Hot Meals USA went to work feeding people who were out of work or not wanting to go out and go shopping. That included many elderly in our community.
After the first wave of serving meals. Hot Meals USA helped to secure over 1,000,000 food boxes to be delivered into our community.
Why Hot Meals USA
At Hot Meals USA we feed people in times of disaster. That has included tornados, floods and fires as well as the spring of 2020 feeding people who as a result of COVID were out of work or not wanting to go out and go shopping. That included many elderly in our community.
To do this, we outfit trailers that can be pulled by pickups, with cooking equipment capable of producing thousands of meals in any environment. We refer to these as cooking units. We currently have 3 such cooking units.
Our current strategic goals include outfitting one such cooking unit to be prepositioned in each of the 10 FEMA regions. This will enable rapid disaster response when called upon. Also, to reach these goals we are implementing a plan to build a home base to prep, and monitor these cooking units before they deploy and as they are in the field being used by staff and volunteers.
Without our volunteers, Hot Meals USA would not be able to provide meals to victims, volunteers, and first responders. Thank you to our heroes…neighbors helping neighbors!
