Packaged shelf stable foods are often on the front lines of disaster response. Think protein bars and canned soup — it’s what can keep, stack on a plane, and be deployed fast. But those foods are very different from the moose and salmon-rich diets villages impacted by ex-Typhoon Halong knew before disaster hit.
It prompted one global food relief organization to spring into action.
“Whatever we can do to give them home cooking or something that they're used to, or something that they remember as a child, we’re going to do at all costs” explained John Torpey, response director of World Central Kitchen (WCK), a chef-led non-profit with projects all over the world.
WCK provides food support to disaster and war-impacted communities and works with locals to curate meals with the affected community’s culture in mind. In addition to communities in the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta impacted by ex-Typhoon Halong, it’s currently feeding war refugees in Gaza and Typhoon-impacted families in the Philippines. In 2022, it brought food to Western Alaska communities hit by Typhoon Merbok.
Shortly after ex-Typhoon Halong hit Y-K Delta communities, Torpey said the Washington D.C.-based organization began to plan. Within days, WCK was able to mobilize out to Bethel and send representatives to affected villages along with thousands of pounds of food.
“They were meeting with the Elders. They were meeting with the people in charge,” Torpey said. “[...] They were trying to figure out their needs so that we could continue to support them with things, with things that they were going to use, things that they wanted, things that they needed.”
Torpey said the team got a lot of requests for soup ingredients, so began to coordinate pallets of potatoes, carrots, and onions communities could use to cook for themselves. If the village was without power, World Central Kitchen brought in canned or ready-made meals. WCK also coordinated with the village of Nightmute to bring a water filtration system to the community.
“We're not here to cook WCK food,” Torpey explained. “We're here to cook food that's comforting, that does provide hope. That makes people feel, that gives people a respite from the disaster for just a little bit.”
Torpey said the operation tried to source as much as it could from Alaska to provide foods that fit with the Indigenous community’s diets. They partnered with Anchorage-based Copper River Seafoods to bring pallets of wild-caught fish out to the Y-K Delta.
WCK also partnered with the City of Bethel and a team of local volunteers to deliver two hundred boxes of food and water to 48 households sheltering evacuees.
The ex-Typhoon hit after summer food harvests. For many, flood damage to homes eliminated frozen subsistence food stores — including berries, moose meat, and salmon — and swept away hunting equipment like snowmachines and skiffs.
“People lost everything in their freezer,” World Central Kitchen corps member Chef Amy Foote explained. “These are the people that didn't even evacuate, right? They're staying home. They're trying to put their lives back together.”
As part of WCK’s network of chefs, Foote helped coordinate more cultural menus for hot meals served in the initial days of the congregate shelters in Anchorage.
“There isn't a one size fits all approach to supporting disaster relief when it comes to food, because food is deeply personal and sacred,” Foote said.
Foote said part of providing food to people impacted by the ex-Typhoon knowing how hard a disaster can be on the body. She said it's like fueling for a marathon. Foote said Native foods like moose and salmon are nutrient-dense, high in Omega- 3s and Vitamin D.
“Aside from having that connectivity to culture, they're like super foods,” Foote explained. “And they can help you get up and keep going.”
Foote said World Central Kitchen and its direct partners, including the Alaska Native Tribal Health Consortium couldn’t accept personal subsistence donations or home cooked meals. But there have been potlucks popping up in Anchorage for evacuees.
“That's really how we see gathering and healing and Indigenous culture in our state anyway,” Foote said. “Is that coming together and bringing from your bounty and from your harvest, and preparing in your home the way your family taught you to do it, and then bringing it and sharing it, and that's all part of that healing space of food.”
Through WCK, Foote has helped serve up halibut chowder at the shelters in Anchorage as well as fish head soup, a traditional Yup’ik meal.
“To provide that in some of these harder situations like this is really that familiarity to food or smells of the food that are reminders of home,” Foote said.
In those initial days at the congregate shelters, Foote said she saw people relax for a moment over a bowl of something known. Maybe, for the first moment in a while.
