An open house and ribbon-cutting ceremony was held on Thursday, May 26 as the Fallon Paiute Shoshone tribe welcomed attendees to their new Emergency Management and Food Distribution Warehouse located at 8942 Mission Road on the Reservation.
Jackie Conway, Emergency Management Manager welcomed attendees, thanking members of the Fallon Business Council, their new food distribution partner Kelli Kelly and the Fallon Food Hub, her Emergency Management Assistant, Tomi Ahdunko, and others who helped make the facility possible. “The goal and use of this new building is to have a central location to store supplies, personal protective equipment, and emergency supplies needed to respond to things like the COVID 19 pandemic. It will also house food for distribution to the community. Thank you to the members of the Fallon Business Council for supporting us, and for being here. Thank you as well to the Emergency Operations Center team, the administration, and our new partners the Fallon Food Hub. We are excited to start, hopefully, next month, pushing out fresh produce to the community. Thanks again for celebrating this open house with us today.”
Yvonne Mori, Tribe Vice-Chair also welcomed attendees and then described their experience. “Oh boy, did we struggle with this building. When COVID hit, the tribe was given money to deal with the pandemic. We had our EOC group, and the council met to discuss how to best use this pot of money to help our people and our community. The federal government gave us a very short amount of time to spend millions of dollars on COVID. We decided on all of the projects we were going to do and had all this food donated. We were delivering boxes, and the whole tribe and employees came together but we had nowhere to store our food. So, we decided that we needed a building for this. When our decision came, we had two days to get a contractor and get everything signed because of the short time frame. We did it, we got it done. Then throughout the whole project, if there was an obstacle, it was thrown in our way, and we had to maneuver. It was a lot of work, but we did it with a lot of sweat and tears. EOC, employees, our partners, tribal members, elders, everyone came together. This is a pretty big deal today because everybody did so much work. This will help with our food sovereignty. I'm really proud of what we have for our community. On behalf of the council, thank you for being here.”
Kelli Kelly, Fallon Food Hub Director spoke about the new food distribution partnership. “I'm just so happy to have formalized a partnership with Jackie and Tomi, and the Tribal Business Council. We'll be partnering on delivering fresh produce here to the new Emergency Management facility for distribution. I invite all of you to come down and take fresh produce. We're looking forward to this, and I hope that this is the beginning of a longer relationship where we increase food sovereignty and food security on the reservation. With this program, the community can pick and choose what produce they want rather than get a box that may contain things they do not like, like kale.”
Ahdunko provided a media tour before the ceremony started, describing each area shown. The main floor consists of a service area and an office area. “The service area is set up with food pantry racks that will hold the fresh produce, and racks for larger equipment such as emergency grab and go tools. Two industrial freezers and one industrial double-door refrigerator line one wall with more equipment due for delivery soon. Quarantine boxes, plastic tubs containing hygiene and other necessities should someone be quarantined are staged along another wall near an industrial scale that will be used to weigh pallets of inbound or outbound goods.” The service area also contains a public restroom, utility room, and additional storage rooms. The office area contains individual offices, a break area, a restroom, the computer and security equipment room, and storage for the building's supplies. The building also has a second floor that Ahdunko described as “an area for storage of things such as PPE, emergency management and COVID supplies, items to fill the quarantine boxes, and anything else that may be needed for an emergency here.”
Tours of the new building were given to attendees at the completion of the ribbon-cutting ceremony that also included an opening prayer, and two performances by Elkhorn singers Yohan and Colton, followed by a to-go lunch of sandwiches, popcorn, and beverages. Forms to sign up for the fresh produce distribution were made available, and more can be acquired from Conway or Ahdunko at the new facility.
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