The Food Bank of Alaska is expanding its space in Anchorage to better prepare for statewide disasters.
Food Bank officials on Tuesday gave a tour of the new 34,000-square-foot building, which is right next to their current facility near downtown. They also announced a $150,000 grant from the KeyBank Foundation.
The food bank will use the building and money for disaster preparedness, CEO Cara Durr said.
She said that the food bank has seen a sustained increase of need for resources over the past few years.
“We're doing all we can just to get food out the door to our partners and to our neighbors in need,” Durr said. “So it's really important for us to be able to have some dedicated space and funding to prepare for those larger disasters.”
The food bank bought the new building a few years ago. It used a $4 million state grant to purchase the building for $3 million, with the rest to be used for renovations.
Durr said the KeyBank grant will go toward shelf-stable food and transportation to help deploy resources more quickly during emergencies.
In a presentation Tuesday, Daniel Bentle with the food bank said that by the time their resources from the Lower 48 reached Western Alaska during ex-Typhoon Halong, victims had already been evacuated to Anchorage.
Durr said that the disaster preparedness initiative will help the food bank stock inventory ahead of disasters, allowing them to provide assistance to communities faster.
The food bank, working with partners, distributes resources across the state and often gets three to four requests for help each week, Durr said. But they don’t have dedicated funding to address those requests, she said. And with rising fuel and food costs, the funds the food bank does have aren’t able to stretch as far.
“Rising fuel and energy costs have had a huge impact, not only from the perspective of our neighbors, but you know we rely on so many different modes of transportation, which use expensive diesel,” Durr said. “Those costs have all gone up.”
The food bank received $1.6 million from the state to continue an emergency food assistance program that sends food boxes to partners across the state.
The emergency preparedness building will be completed by the summer.
