Barry Whitworth and Craig Campbell introduce new Disaster Relief kitchen

Hello, BRN Family. Barry Whitworth here. I’m at PEMA, which is the Pennsylvania Emergency Management unit, and we have a small feeding kitchen that is being assembled by our Disaster Relief. This is Craig Campbell, and he is our feeding coordinator, right, for our Disaster Relief here in Pennsylvania/South Jersey. Craig brought me over here to give us a tour of how they’re building this out. This unit that can be utilized in smaller spaces, like in cities, to respond to disasters, but even do different projects and ministries and maybe help with events across Pennsylvania/South Jersey, and especially in our big cities of Pittsburgh and Philadelphia. So, Craig, tell us a little bit about what you got going on here.

Craig Campbell: Sure, very soon as you mentioned, you know, this unit was optimized for urban use so we got a drop tongue on this. So we’ve basically got 20 feet. If we take the tongue off, we can carry onboard propane for our cooking use and run the generator that’s on board. We have twin storage closets up here and if we go over on the side here, you see a little bit about the cooking area.

Barry: I love the fact that the tongue is removable. That’s genius!

Craig: Very, very necessary when trying to fit all this equipment into a parking space. So, this is our work area for this kitchen, and like our big kitchen, we work inside this unit. So, behind you is a triple sink and a hand-washing station behind that. We’ve got an industrial-sized 500-cup capacity coffeemaker on this unit–gas-fired actually. Did you see the lighting? This is all LED lighting. There’s an HVAC unit over your head for heating and cooling both.

Barry: Wonderful.

Craig: We’ve got a small tilt skillet here–16 gallon capacity; full-size commercial, convection oven in here; space as well for an induction burner; and this is a hot water heater in the back. So this is really the work space in here. We have a table or two we can set up in this space to work with and a serving window out this door. If we were to close that, this would actually be a serving window. (You just got that in the shot.) You can serve right out the window. We’re up a little higher today because we’re working on the unit as well. We have a table here to set up to help with serving. We’ve got an awning on this side that will come out and enclose this space for inclement weather. And then we actually, unlike the big one, we have our own refrigeration space here in the back. So this is either a freezer or refrigeration space, and we can hold up to a ton of food, basically, in this compartment.

Barry: A ton of food?

Craig: A ton of food. So this unit’s under 10,000 pounds, max weight, so it can be pulled by a regular pickup truck without any special consideration of registration levels. Our big kitchen, we have to have that the weight of the trailer actually in the weight of the truck.

Barry: You said, if you take the tongue off, this will fit in this parking space, right?

Craig: Right! This is 20 foot without the top.

Barry: That is amazing! It’s pretty much like, I’ll say, self-sustaining. You have your power, you have everything you need to get the job done and go on.

Craig: Right. It is not in the unit today, when we took a look, but we will put water tanks in, probably carrying up to about 70 gallons of water with us. But also equipping this unit for the long haul, we will have ability to tie in to shore power. We’ll be able to tie in to shore plumbing for both water and waste out. And all that capability will be here as well so that if we’re in a long-term response, we’re able to do that. So just to finish up, on the other side here, we’ll take a peek at the utilities.

Craig: Being street side, this is not intended to be accessed if we’re in an urban type environment. So, we did we have this accessible on this side. This is our utility closet because six-and-a-half kilowatt onboard generator, propane fire, as well as all our electricals and refrigeration for the freezing unit.

Barry: This is amazing. I know, you designed this, didn’t you?

Craig: Right.

Barry: And that’s incredible. What a gift you are to the Kingdom. And the way that God has wired you and gifted you that you could be able to think about and put something like this together, that will help in crisis, but also just helping again with ministry and helping our churches to do events. So we look forward to the day that this kitchen gets rolled out. And we’re excited that Disaster Relief Is putting this together. We’re excited that these men are here today utilizing this facility in order to prepare it for future use. So just wanted to drop in and just let you know what Disaster Relief does behind the scenes and the things that they work hard to do to help us be prepared for what may happen out there that we can respond to when we have the opportunity. So thanks for listening and have a great day. God bless you.