Gluten Busters: Gluten-Free Product Alerts by Celiac.com

Celiac.com 10/16/2017 - As you may know, Celiac.com is based in Santa Rosa, CA. So far, all staff is fine, and the founder, Scott Adams, has had to evacuate his home (which is currently fine, but close to the Oakmont fire).

Celiac.com Sponsor (A13):
We'll do our best to keep our articles and information on celiac disease flowing. Luckily our servers are not located in California. 

We'd like to pass on this information from the Celiac Community Foundation of Northern California to other celiacs who may be affected by the evacuations:

Celiac Community Foundation of Northern California

Fire Evacuees: Direct Assistance

We are in the process of assessing the need for gluten-free and allergen-friendly disaster assistance in the fire zone in Northern California.

EVACUEES
If you have been evacuated and need safe food for your medically-prescribed dietary restriction, please send an email to info@celiaccommunity.org with some basic information (number of people, ages, best contact, dietary restrictions, level of urgency, location/shelter). We can try to get gluten-free and allergen-friendly food to you and work with the kitchen in your shelter regarding storage and preparation.

UPDATES
We will provide updates for the relief effort here: Open Original Shared Link. Our foundation is a member of the Gluten-Free Disaster Relief Task Force, which was established for hurricane relief and is ready to assist with the fire zone.

FOOD TYPES
We can provide foods that would not normally be found in a shelter (i.e. gluten-free bread, snacks, bars, jerky, canned soups and stews, non-peanut nut or seed butters, cereal, etc.). The shelters should be able to provide things like produce, peanut butter, meat, dairy and eggs).

DELIVERY LIMITATIONS
Our delivery is limited by mandatory evacuations, curfews and the request by first responders to generally stay off the roads. However, we will do what we can to assist.

EVACUATION CENTERS
The evacuation center at the Santa Rosa Veterans Memorial building has a kitchen run by our celiac community member Jennifer Torrey and she is volunteering her time every day to prepare 500 meals three times a day for all dietary restrictions, including celiac disease and food allergies. So far, she has all the donated food and volunteers she needs. You can also stay at the two evacuation centers at the Santa Rosa fairgrounds (Grace Pavilion is for the medically fragile and Finley Hall is for those with pets) and walk across the street to the Veterans building to get meals. If you aren't ambulatory, they can take you in a wheelchair or bring the meals to you. Many more evacuation centers are listed online, but it is unknown if they can serve special dietary needs.

FOOD BANK
The Redwood Empire Food Bank in Santa Rosa, which serves the North Bay at 177 food pantries, 60 shelters and ad hoc locations such as parking lots and campgrounds, cannot separate gluten-free/allergy food during a disaster, but they are alerting us of needs at specific locations. Yesterday, we assisted 25 people with gluten-free/dairy-free needs at a shelter, delivering food donated by Whole Foods in Sebastopol. Right now, we do not have a storage facility or distribution process for large-scale product donations.

DONATIONS
At this time we are not requesting monetary or product donations for this relief effort. If we locate enough evacuees who need assistance, we will send a separate email with a donation request.