Stockton Emergency Food Bank hit with fourth fire in just weeks
A fire has hit the Stockton Emergency Food Bank for the fourth time in roughly three weeks, crippling their operations.
The Stockton Fire Department said flames from a grass fire spread to the building, burning a building as well as a storage crate and cardboard boxes in the loading area. The initial call came in around 6:45 p.m. on Wednesday.
Dr. Leonard Hansen, CEO of the food bank, says this is a gut punch to their daily operations. He's trying to figure out a way to clean this all up, get necessary and useful equipment cleaned and sanitized, and then still be up in the morning and hand out the food they give to families.
Hansen said the food bank expects about 500 cars every single day. That includes people who need the food and 107 other sites and organizations that rely on the food bank to deliver.
For Dr. Hansen and the community, this will be hard to overcome, and he feels that someone did this on purpose. In June, three fires occurred at the food bank within a week.
"I can't explain the behavior, but this is not accidental," he said. "How do you take care of the people and the folks who depend on you, so you find a way?"
These fires are still under investigation. Hansen says the city will send more engineers in the morning to check on the structure's integrity.
During the third fire, surveillance video caught a suspect throwing an incendiary device into a pile of cardboard, burning through a shipping container with thousands of dollars worth of donations.
Dr. Hansen says this is especially disheartening for San Joaquin County, which has roughly 83,000 people who are food insecure. Hansen said the food bank serves 88% of those people.
