I've always thought that Operation BBQ Relief was a good organization doing good work in the Midwest and the South and the East Coast, and I've given them a few dollars in the past. But I wondered if there was a big disaster on the West Coast...would they come help here, where I live?
That question was answered with a resounding "Yes!" earlier this month when the devastating wildfires broke out all over Northern California.
On the evening of October 8, I stayed up all night watching the local television news coverage as my childhood hometown of Santa Rosa, CA burned. Local landmarks and neighborhoods and businesses that I knew were going up in smoke. The fires were spreading rapidly, out of control, and I had family in Santa Rosa, in Windsor to the north, and Rohnert Park to the south. Would they have to evacuate? Would they lose their homes? It was frightening and stressful and consumed much of my time for the following nine or ten days.
On the afternoon of October 9, I checked the California BBQ Association website to see if there was any talk among the barbecue community about organizing an effort to help provide relief. The CBBQA was reaching out for people on the ground in Sonoma and Napa Counties to act as leads to connect with Operation BBQ Relief. As it turns out, there were a number of people already on the ground in both locations and other people outside the disaster area all thinking the same thoughts, reaching out to OBR to see if they would mobilize their resources for this disaster.
The two people that I think deserve the most credit are Jim Modesitt of Big Jim's BBQ in San Rafael and Vince Sanchez of Woodhouse Barbecue in St. Helena. On Day One, Jim and his crew were in Santa Rosa grilling food for first responders and raising money on GoFundMe, and Vince and his crew were doing the same in Napa. It was a few days later that Operation BBQ Relief arrived in both locations and joined the effort. In the meantime, both of these local groups were cranking out lots of meals on their own for people affected by the fires. Kudos to them!
By October 10 or 11, OBR began taking registrations for people wanting to help in Santa Rosa and Napa. You could sign-up for an all-day shift, a seven-hour AM shift (7:00 AM - 2:00 PM), or a seven-hour PM shift (12:00 PM - 7:00 PM). My wife Julie and I signed up for the PM shift on Monday, October 16. We were warned that air quality was an issue and if you had any sort of health or breathing issues you should not volunteer. My breathing is a bit sensitive, but there was no way I was going to miss-out on this opportunity to help OBR and I figured I could handle a 7 hour shift and would wear a mask if I had to.
We got our "deployment notice" by email the day before our scheduled shift, telling us where to go and when to get there. OBR does not publicize their deployment location and asks volunteers to not share this information on social media, I assume for reasons of security and being bombarded by more volunteers than they can handle. But OBR's cover was blown early on by the involvement of celebrity chef and Santa Rosa resident Guy Fieri. He was all over the news promoting the effort, so everyone knew that OBR was located behind the Veterans Memorial Building in Santa Rosa, right across Highway 12 from the Sonoma County Fairgrounds.
On Monday morning, we made the two hour drive from our home in San Jose to Santa Rosa and arrived about 30 minutes before the start of our 12:00 PM shift. An OBR volunteer coordinator signed us in at the RV serving as Site Headquarters, then turned us loose into the compound to find out what needed to be done. Julie and I were a little confused at this point...we assumed there would be an orientation meeting, some instructions given, a food safety briefing, etc. There was none of that. We just looked around, saw something that needed to be done, slipped on some disposable gloves, and got to work.
The first task was removing pork loins from their packaging so that other workers could slather them with mustard, rub them, and place them into the big propane-fired smokers donated by Kinder's BBQ and others. Some of the loins were still partially frozen, but that didn't matter. Slather, rub, and into the smoker they go.
After washing out some Cambros and helping with other cleaning tasks, it was time for the group lunch. A local chef dropped off a tray of shredded beef that was served with tortillas and all the fixin's necessary for making tacos or a taco salad. Simple, tasty, and kept everyone energized.
For the remainder of the afternoon, we were mostly busy doing a variety of things, with some downtime here and there. We formed an assembly line to make 35 big foil pans of chicken jambalaya. Three scoops of rice in the bottom of the pan, two big handfuls of seasoned shredded chicken, a scoop of diced onions, two scoops of veggie mix, a certain amount of broth, everything stirred, covered with a foil lid, and placed into one of the pits to cook. We formed another assembly line to make 35 pans of sliced pork loin, 50 servings per pan. One group sliced the pork, another group arranged the slices in the pans and poured on a flavorful gravy, and others covered the pans and stored them in Cambros for pickup later. And yet another assembly line for pork butts...remove from the packaging, drop butts one at a time into a big foil pan filled with rub, cover all surfaces completely with rub, and place into a box for transport over to the smokers where the butts would cook overnight for the next day's lunch service.
More cleanup, several trips to the refrigerator truck for supplies, more washing of Cambro containers, cleaning tables. You name it, we did it.
At some point in the afternoon, everyone was called together and the OBR staff presented Guy Fieri with an OBR challenge coin and thanked him for all he had done for this deployment. Guy said a few words about the effort and offered his thanks to everyone for turning out to help support his home town during its time of need. We weren't privy to everything Fieri had contributed to this event, and that's as it should be because he was not doing it for self-publicity. But it was clear that much of the equipment and many of the staff running around the compound were staff and associates he'd brought in to help with the effort. I did get the sense that Fieri's involvement made this "not your typical OBR deployment" in terms of how things were done around the compound, but in the end everyone was there to help and did so with a good spirit and to the best of my knowledge with minimal friction. And as that Monday was Fieri's last day to be personally at the compound, we all gathered together for a group photo.
Photo Credit: Don Adkins
Continued...
That question was answered with a resounding "Yes!" earlier this month when the devastating wildfires broke out all over Northern California.
On the evening of October 8, I stayed up all night watching the local television news coverage as my childhood hometown of Santa Rosa, CA burned. Local landmarks and neighborhoods and businesses that I knew were going up in smoke. The fires were spreading rapidly, out of control, and I had family in Santa Rosa, in Windsor to the north, and Rohnert Park to the south. Would they have to evacuate? Would they lose their homes? It was frightening and stressful and consumed much of my time for the following nine or ten days.
On the afternoon of October 9, I checked the California BBQ Association website to see if there was any talk among the barbecue community about organizing an effort to help provide relief. The CBBQA was reaching out for people on the ground in Sonoma and Napa Counties to act as leads to connect with Operation BBQ Relief. As it turns out, there were a number of people already on the ground in both locations and other people outside the disaster area all thinking the same thoughts, reaching out to OBR to see if they would mobilize their resources for this disaster.
The two people that I think deserve the most credit are Jim Modesitt of Big Jim's BBQ in San Rafael and Vince Sanchez of Woodhouse Barbecue in St. Helena. On Day One, Jim and his crew were in Santa Rosa grilling food for first responders and raising money on GoFundMe, and Vince and his crew were doing the same in Napa. It was a few days later that Operation BBQ Relief arrived in both locations and joined the effort. In the meantime, both of these local groups were cranking out lots of meals on their own for people affected by the fires. Kudos to them!
By October 10 or 11, OBR began taking registrations for people wanting to help in Santa Rosa and Napa. You could sign-up for an all-day shift, a seven-hour AM shift (7:00 AM - 2:00 PM), or a seven-hour PM shift (12:00 PM - 7:00 PM). My wife Julie and I signed up for the PM shift on Monday, October 16. We were warned that air quality was an issue and if you had any sort of health or breathing issues you should not volunteer. My breathing is a bit sensitive, but there was no way I was going to miss-out on this opportunity to help OBR and I figured I could handle a 7 hour shift and would wear a mask if I had to.
We got our "deployment notice" by email the day before our scheduled shift, telling us where to go and when to get there. OBR does not publicize their deployment location and asks volunteers to not share this information on social media, I assume for reasons of security and being bombarded by more volunteers than they can handle. But OBR's cover was blown early on by the involvement of celebrity chef and Santa Rosa resident Guy Fieri. He was all over the news promoting the effort, so everyone knew that OBR was located behind the Veterans Memorial Building in Santa Rosa, right across Highway 12 from the Sonoma County Fairgrounds.
On Monday morning, we made the two hour drive from our home in San Jose to Santa Rosa and arrived about 30 minutes before the start of our 12:00 PM shift. An OBR volunteer coordinator signed us in at the RV serving as Site Headquarters, then turned us loose into the compound to find out what needed to be done. Julie and I were a little confused at this point...we assumed there would be an orientation meeting, some instructions given, a food safety briefing, etc. There was none of that. We just looked around, saw something that needed to be done, slipped on some disposable gloves, and got to work.
The first task was removing pork loins from their packaging so that other workers could slather them with mustard, rub them, and place them into the big propane-fired smokers donated by Kinder's BBQ and others. Some of the loins were still partially frozen, but that didn't matter. Slather, rub, and into the smoker they go.
After washing out some Cambros and helping with other cleaning tasks, it was time for the group lunch. A local chef dropped off a tray of shredded beef that was served with tortillas and all the fixin's necessary for making tacos or a taco salad. Simple, tasty, and kept everyone energized.
For the remainder of the afternoon, we were mostly busy doing a variety of things, with some downtime here and there. We formed an assembly line to make 35 big foil pans of chicken jambalaya. Three scoops of rice in the bottom of the pan, two big handfuls of seasoned shredded chicken, a scoop of diced onions, two scoops of veggie mix, a certain amount of broth, everything stirred, covered with a foil lid, and placed into one of the pits to cook. We formed another assembly line to make 35 pans of sliced pork loin, 50 servings per pan. One group sliced the pork, another group arranged the slices in the pans and poured on a flavorful gravy, and others covered the pans and stored them in Cambros for pickup later. And yet another assembly line for pork butts...remove from the packaging, drop butts one at a time into a big foil pan filled with rub, cover all surfaces completely with rub, and place into a box for transport over to the smokers where the butts would cook overnight for the next day's lunch service.
More cleanup, several trips to the refrigerator truck for supplies, more washing of Cambro containers, cleaning tables. You name it, we did it.
At some point in the afternoon, everyone was called together and the OBR staff presented Guy Fieri with an OBR challenge coin and thanked him for all he had done for this deployment. Guy said a few words about the effort and offered his thanks to everyone for turning out to help support his home town during its time of need. We weren't privy to everything Fieri had contributed to this event, and that's as it should be because he was not doing it for self-publicity. But it was clear that much of the equipment and many of the staff running around the compound were staff and associates he'd brought in to help with the effort. I did get the sense that Fieri's involvement made this "not your typical OBR deployment" in terms of how things were done around the compound, but in the end everyone was there to help and did so with a good spirit and to the best of my knowledge with minimal friction. And as that Monday was Fieri's last day to be personally at the compound, we all gathered together for a group photo.
Photo Credit: Don Adkins
Continued...
