Anonymous
Source: Santa Barbara City Fire Department
A big fire service shout-out to World Central Kitchen and Rincon Brewery who have partnered to deliver meals to Santa Barbara City Fire, Carpinteria-Summerland Fire & Santa Barbara County Fire Departments.
Chef Jose Andres and World Central Kitchen are supporting first responders and hospitals throughout Santa Barbara and Ventura Counties with plates of food so that we may all help our communities during this pandemic.
World Central Kitchen is a non-profit company that responds to disasters around the world with initiatives like #ChefsForAmerica which provides meals to those in need and gets people back to work in restaurants. Thank you!
My understanding is they roll on medical calls but as soon as the AMR paramedics show up they step away and go back to their station. So unless someone is saying that AMR is too overwhelmed to respond to calls at this time, it is not clear what we get out of them in basic medical calls. If they didn’t roll on medical calls they wouldn’t be very busy since we have so few fires and right now very few accidents.
While a noble thought that makes people “feel good” there is more to this. The first responders have plenty in their budgets for food. They are never “not fed”. In large scale incidents such as fires private companies are paid to provide the food. If this is replaced by donated food it results in waste and harm to the private company (thus more unemployment). During a recent fire in LA area Facebook group posts had people bragging “I just delivered pizza to this location “(fire staging). Or I just dropped off breakfast burritos at x location. It turned into a fury of outdoing each other. Then the posts started coming in from the first responders staff NO MORE FOOD DONATIONS. I agree with those suggesting the unemployed and food banks should get the meals.