Wildfire smoke is moving into the valley and is projected to do so through the remainder of the week, at least. Air quality levels will degrade to dangerous levels. Safety comes first. The decision to close or stay open is partially reliant on your operation - if you operate outdoors, what hours you distribute, if you are appointment based, and so forth. When deciding to close, please notify us as soon as possible at emergencyresponse@oregonfoodbank.org so we can take care of your order and delivery.

If you decide to stay open, please make sure to use N95/KN95 masks if available. In the heat, the burden of keeping our perishables cool can put an extra strain on your power grids. If your power goes down, we are hoping to have a list of folx who may be able to accept (pick up or accept delivery of) another partner's inventory. Please email mwcs@oregonfoodbank.org if you would like to be on this list. 

Safe Handling of Food in the Heat:
Please make use of active or passive refrigeration as much as possible when distributing and transporting perishable items, and shoot for 30 minutes or less if transporting food using passive refrigeration (freezer blankets/coolers) in non-refrigerated trucks or personal vehicles. During distribution, please make use of freezer blankets, coolers, and ice packs when active refrigeration is not possible, and consistently temp products every half hour to ensure they're staying within a safe range.
If your refrigeration goes down, please only consider re-distributing to another OFB Partner Agency if the product is temping below 32 degrees F/ frozen solid for frozen items, and 41 degrees F for refrigerated items. Frozen items must be regularly stored at or below 0 degrees F, but can be safely transported and received at or below 32 degrees F. You must throw away product if it is found to be above these temperature guidelines. Please email mwcs@oregonfoodbank.org if you have any questions about the safety of your product, and refer to the OFB Food Safety Manual.

High temperatures are harmful to non-perishable foods as well. The risk of spoilage jumps sharply as storage temperatures rise. All dry goods exposed to this level of heat need to be quickly offloaded, and stored in a location that is consistently between 50-70 degrees F. Please be sure you are logging the temperatures of your dry storage areas, if you aren't already doing so. 

Donor agencies please log distributed inventory on the re-distribution tracking log (attached), and recipient agencies please report received pounds on Line 5 of your statistics reports, and note the name of the agency/date/product description in the notes section. Please refer to our re-distribution guide/log for more information.