WASHINGTON — As the focus turns to aid following a massive 7.8 magnitude earthquake in Turkey and Syria, D.C. chef José Andrés and his World Central Kitchen organization are doing their part to help survivors.
Andrés and relief teams from WCK arrived in Turkey Thursday night and immediately started handing out food to exhausted rescue workers. Rescue workers made a final push Thursday to find survivors of the earthquake that rendered many communities unrecognizable to their inhabitants and led the Turkish president to declare it “the disaster of the century." The death toll topped 20,000.
In video updates posted to Twitter, Andrés said that World Central Kitchen is working to establish kitchens and scale up meal deliveries to people in need. In a parking lot in Iskenderun, Andrés said they had delivered 150 meals, and thousands more in different areas.
"People are anxious, that's why it's the right moment to start using cuisine," Andrés said. Speaking to the camera, Andrés envisioned setting up an open-air market in the parking lot so people can come and "shop."
He said it is important, in the early days of a disaster, to get people whatever they need most.
"It's important that we become for days, weeks this kind of private sector mentality, providing what people in normal times would get on their own," he said.
Andés and World Central Kitchen are well known for their disaster response. The D.C. chef has provided hot meals on the ground in Ukraine following the Russian invasion, as well as other disasters around the world.
For more information on World Central Kitchen, click here.