Spokane, Wash. — As crews worked the front lines of the Spokane Complex Fires, local support kept showing up in big ways, including meals for firefighters and families displaced by the fires.
Chef Chad White stepped in after the fires began and helped plan and prepare breakfast at the initial Mount Spokane command center, American Red Cross shelters and the convention center. He is a Spokane native and a contestant from Season 13 of Top Chef in 2015.
White said the fires pushed him to find a way to help as destruction spread quickly starting Saturday. He described the effort as a nonprofit act of service that would continue until firefighters could go home.
“Once I started seeing visuals and photos of people’s homes burning to the ground and how many were happening in such a very quick time frame, we just we thought, wow, this is absolutely insane. How can we help?” White said. “We just said, we’ll figure out the money part later. And so let’s just act, let’s get people what they need.”
He said the work quickly turned into large-scale meal planning.
“We had to buy 150 dozen eggs. We had to buy, I think it was like 70 or 80 pounds of bacon, 100 pounds of potatoes, 70 pounds of cheese, you know, 20 pounds of butter, you know, 600 tortillas,” White said.
White said people across Spokane also reached out to help with money and time so more meals could be prepared.
“We’ve had a ton of people who have reached out and said, we want to donate money. We want to donate time. We love what you’re doing. We appreciate that you love your city so much, and we love our city, and we want to give to you so you can continue to prepare more meals,” White said. “How we’re going to get it done was really kind of some short conversations. Reached out to a couple of people that we knew in the city, that knew what was going on and where first responders were going to be, and heard that around 250 people needed hot meals.”
White said he took food to the convention center for the Red Cross and then went to the Garland Theater, where families were gathering for supplies like toiletries, diapers and water.
He said the cost has been hard for a small business, but Spokane’s response stood out to him during the fire emergency.
“It is difficult, as a small business owner to pony up money that is not going to generate money back and just donate. But our community is very important to me. And the one thing about Spokane is it really does come together in a really big way, whether it’s a positive thing or a negative thing, like this scenario where it’s a natural disaster,” White said.
White said the kitchen prepared 600 burritos on Tuesday and more than 800 the next day, along with more than 250 meals earlier in the week.
“My heart goes out to the people who have been affected by this. I can’t imagine what it’s like to lose my home, and we will continue to do what we can until the need is is is fixed,” White said.
The Inland Northwest Catering Company and Longhorn BBQ had also been serving firefighters since arriving on Sunday with breakfast, lunch and dinner. The federally funded Thunder Mountain Catering Company was set to take over for the remaining days.
A firefighter’s daily nutrition remained a key part of the work. The International Association of Firefighters recommended a palm portion of protein, a fist portion of vegetables, a cupped-hand portion of carbs and a thumb portion of fats, along with heavy hydration.
