NEWS: Food Bank Slowly Coming Back Online
The Fredericksburg Regional Food Bank will begin opening up Friday morning.
By Martin Davis
EDITOR-IN-CHIEF
Email Martin
The Fredericksburg Regional Food Bank has been closed this week because of road conditions. Dan Maher, the Food Bank’s CEO, told the Advance on Sunday via email that opening the facility would require staff “need[ing] time to assess everything onsite before we could reopen.”
Beginning Friday morning, however, the Food Bank will be restoring some services.
Maher told the Advance via email on Thursday evening that “we will be reopening our Lee Hill Drive facility and gradually restoring operations as we can … by reopening our Order Ahead program and preparing for fulfilling partner agency orders for pickup next week.”
The Food Bank is dependent on volunteers for many of its activities, and they have also been out this week. Maher said that “volunteer activities will be restored beginning on Saturday, January 31.
The Food Bank will fully restore operations on Monday, February 2.
A Trying Week for Partners, People Facing Food Insecurity
It’s been a trying week not only for the Food Bank, but for its 200 regional partners. The weather has forced many to suspend operations due to poor road conditions.
The FredFoodVA app, which tracks food pantries and their opening times and days, has recorded 11 food distribution sites since January 26 that had to suspend services for a day because of the weather. The closures have affected large and small pantries alike.
Chancellor Baptist Church in Spotsylvania is one of the larger distribution sites, serving some 300 people. It had to close on Wednesday. The site at Germanna Community also had to close on Wednesday. It serves students attending GCC.
While the Food Bank is opening on Monday, the decision to of local distribution sites to open is made by each site. Those planning to attend and collect food on a regular distribution day this coming week should confirm locations are open this coming week before making the trip.
Local Obituaries
To view local obituaries or to send a note to family and loved ones, please visit the link that follows.
Support Award-winning, Locally Focused Journalism
The FXBG Advance cuts through the talking points to deliver both incisive and informative news about the issues, people, and organizations that daily affect your life. And we do it in a multi-partisan format that has no equal in this region. Over the past year, our reporting was:
First to break the story of Stafford Board of Supervisors dismissing a citizen library board member for “misconduct,” without informing the citizen or explaining what the person allegedly did wrong.
First to explain falling water levels in the Rappahannock Canal.
First to detail controversial traffic numbers submitted by Stafford staff on the Buc-ee’s project
Our media group also offers the most-extensive election coverage in the region and regular columnists like:
And our newsroom is led by the most-experienced and most-awarded journalists in the region — Adele Uphaus (Managing Editor and multiple VPA award-winner) and Martin Davis (Editor-in-Chief, 2022 Opinion Writer of the Year in Virginia and more than 25 years reporting from around the country and the world).
For just $8 a month, you can help support top-flight journalism that puts people over policies.
Your contributions 100% support our journalists.
Help us as we continue to grow!
This article is published under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND. It can be distributed for noncommercial purposes and must include the following: “Published with permission by FXBG Advance.”
Strong local reporting on an issue that actually affects people's daily access to food. The detail about 11 distribution sites being closed since Jan 26 puts the single facility reopening in proper context. I worked with a foodbank once during a smilar weather crisis and the ripple effects can last weeks, especially when volunteer capacity is already tight in winter.