WCK’s 2026 Wildfire Response Hub
World Central Kitchen is on the frontlines of the 2026 wildfire season—serving emergency meals to displaced families across the U.S. and beyond. Track active responses, donate, and stay updated.
Founded in 2010 by Chef José Andrés, WCK is first to the frontlines—providing fresh, nourishing meals to communities when they need them most. Applying our model of urgency, local partnership, and real-time adaptation, WCK has served more than 600 million meals worldwide—including more than tk million meals to families impacted by wildfires alone.
Our Response
Wildfires are now a year-round emergency.
Wildfires are no longer a seasonal story confined to one region. As the climate crisis intensifies, prolonged drought, extreme heat, and high winds are fueling fires that burn hotter and spread faster than ever before. The toll on communities is devastating—families displaced overnight, roads severed, power cut, grocery stores shuttered. Entire neighborhoods lose everything in hours, and recovery takes months, sometimes years.
In the United States, the 2026 wildfire season is forecast to be one of the most active on record, with elevated risk spanning the Southeast, Southwest, Texas, California, and the Northern Rockies.
For WCK, this means we need to be ready for more emergency responses.
Recent Wildfire Responses
2025 Los Angeles Wildfires
WCK’s Relief Team is in Southern California to support first responders and families impacted by wildfires in the Los Angeles area. Our teams have mobilized across the region to provide immediate relief. We are working with restaurant and food truck partners to provide comforting meals.
2026 Chile Wildfires
WCK’s Relief Team was on the ground in Chile responding to a third wildfire in the country in four years. We served meals in and around Concepción as deadly blazes forced tens of thousands of people to evacuate their homes.
2025 Northwestern Spain Wildfires
WCK teams worked across northwestern Spain, supporting communities affected by the devastating wildfires in the area. We deployed our food truck and partnered with local restaurants to ensure families and first responders received the support they needed.
Stay Updated
Follow WCK’s wildfire response as it happens. Join our newsletter to get real-time updates from the frontlines delivered to your inbox.
Built for a worsening crisis.
As wildfires ignite simultaneously across the globe and converge into a year-round crisis, some communities now face fires year after year, in seasons that no longer have a clear end.
WCK is building the infrastructure to meet that reality—expanding regional capacity, strengthening local partnerships, and investing in systems that allow us to respond to multiple emergencies at once.
When wildfires strike, hunger doesn’t wait.
Since 2017, WCK has responded to more than 50 wildfire emergencies across the mainland United States, Canada, Chile, Greece, Türkiye, Spain, Australia, and Hawaiʻi.
In 2018, WCK’s largest single wildfire response required roughly 195,000 meals. By 2025, a single response in Southern California required nearly 1.7 million. Chile, Greece, and Spain have required WCK teams multiple years in a row. The pace of our wildfire responses has roughly tripled since 2022.
WCK's Wildfire Responses
The Impact
Behind every statistic is a meal served, a community supported, and a moment of relief when it mattered most.
50+
Wildfire Responses
3 million
Meals Served During Wildfire Responses
7
Countries Where WCK has Responded to Wildfires
To meet the challenge of this moment, we need all hands on deck.
How to Help
WCK is ready before the call comes.
The Climate & Natural Disaster Fund provides flexible, ready-to-deploy resources that allow WCK to mobilize for wildfire responses without waiting for event-specific fundraising.
Preparedness is not optional. It is strategic.
The Climate & Natural Disaster Fund allows us to:
- Pre-position equipment and supplies in high-risk regions
- Maintain trained response teams ready to deploy at a moment’s notice
- Sustain the long-term local partnerships that make rapid response possible
- Scale across multiple geographies simultaneously
Because when wildfires force families to evacuate, roads are closed, and neighborhoods are destroyed, the first question is simple: How will we eat today?