Disaster Kitchen Training: Spirit of America Kitchen

Patty and I are Red Cross Disaster volunteers and attended a two day disaster kitchen training session in Americus Georgia. The instructors were truly outstanding and the program they put on was exceptional. The training took place at South West Georgia Technical school in Americus which is the infamous place that the 9/11 high jackers trained. This very modern, well appointed facility was superb for adult training and sort of helped to set the positive tone of this training session. The trainees were a mixed bag of young, older, male, female, white, Afro-American, theists, non-theists, Red Cross volunteers and community volunteers. We were a laughing and amiable group of trainees. The local community volunteers were motivated by the fact they had a tornado move through the area last year which destroyed a number of buildings including the local hospital.
The training kitchen was the Spirit of America Disaster Kitchen which was donated to the Red Cross through the efforts of the Greenwich Connecticut Red Cross Chapter in honor of two men killed on 9/11. This kitchen itself was built by the Carlin Company and is capable of feeding thirty thousand meals a day. Spirit of America is built inside a fifty three feet long semi- trailer. It has everything that a commercial kitchen has and is self contained with fresh and grey water tanks. On the second day of training, we prepared breakfast for the trainers and trainees and then prepared lunch for two hundred sixteen people from the community and school. Joy of joys, we were given the opportunity to clean up our mess and get Spirit of America ready to hit the road.
We learned, laughed, met old friends made new friends and ate pretty well.