North Hills nonprofit manages to feed thousands amid power outage

The brutal heat wave that plagued Southern California again this week left thousands of residents without working air conditioners and refrigerators.

As utilities scrambled to dispatch maintenance crews over the weekend, San Fernando Valley nonprofit Hope the Mission was dealing with a catastrophe: figuring out how to feed thousands of residents living at its shelters, most of them elder residents and families with children.

“The power outage lasted from Friday all the way to Monday night, and it really brought us to our knees,” said Rowan Vansleve, Hope the Mission’s president.

The nonprofit operates 33 facilities, including 22 shelters with 2,700 beds across Southern California. Each day, its staff prepares about 6,000 hot meals at the central kitchen in North Hills and distributes them to about 2,000 people living at its shelters.

On Friday night half of the equipment in the kitchen was left without power. Coolers, refrigerators and an air conditioner went silent as the building quickly heated up to 100 degrees.

To prepare hot meals, the crew moved to the parking lot, set up a barbecue grill and cooked in the blistering heat.

For the evening meals on Saturday and Sunday, as the kitchen remained without power, the administration catered the food, costing more than $12,000. In total, the nonprofit spent about $20,000 on catering and spoiled food.

“When the temperature was hitting 100 degrees in the office or the kitchen, people still turned up and wanted to work,” Vansleve said, as his employees worked on laptops at coffee shops or turned in early to beat the heat. “These guys are the salt of the Earth,” he said. “They are really doing the work.”

Meanwhile, the outreach team headed to encampments to offer water, ice and assistance with relocating to cooling centers.

The outreach team “was doing the work on the front lines,” Vansleve said. “They are saints. They were making sure people were not dying in the heat.”

Over the years the nonprofit has experienced all kinds of natural disasters, including a bad storm that ripped their roof off. Still, they’ve never experienced a heat wave so bad that it would blow up their transformers, causing their facilities to lose power.

As of Tuesday evening, the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power reported about 5,347 outages affecting its 1.5 million customers, a decrease from 6,190 earlier in the day.

LADWP workers continued their repair efforts throughout Tuesday evening, aiming to restore power.

Those in the shelters were able to navigate the heat without too much disturbance, Vansleve said.

Crystal Ode, who lives at The Woodlands shelter in Woodland Hills with her three children, ages 2, 10, and 11, said that she hardly noticed the effect from the power outages.

“Mostly they are bringing sandwiches and fruits, coleslaw and macaroni and cheese,” Ode said. “Either way we still get our meals even if they are not warm. The kids love it.”

Over the weekend, the shelter staff hosted water balloon fights for the children. For dinner, residents received pizza, fruit and ice cream.

Ode and her children lived in a room at The Woodlands equipped with a TV, refrigerator, and air conditioner and during the heat wave she barely felt the impact of the power outage.

“My experience has been amazing here,” she said.

The nonprofit has received an outpouring of support from individuals, businesses and elected officials. Representatives from the office of Los Angeles Councilmember John Lee and Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass called to offer support. A woman offered to bring a generator and plug it into the kitchen to keep the power on.

“It showed the best of our city and who the people around the Hope of the Mission are,” Vansleve said. “They are truly doing everything to make sure that people in crisis are taken care of.”

On Tuesday, operations at the central kitchen were back to normal.

The nonprofit’s maintenance crew has been inspecting their shelters to finish the repairs. Their outreach team “probably needs a day off and a big glass of water. They’ve been working so hard in extreme temperatures going to places with no shade, helping people,” Vansleve said.

“We all are celebrating that it’s going to be 98 degrees at most of our sites today,” he said earlier this week, “and we’re calling it a day cool.”