Six refrigerated trucks. The entire fleet used to transport foodstuffs from the Gard Food Bank (apart from two small vans only functional in summer) was destroyed by flames.
Six trucks from the Gard Food Bank burned
It is 1:30 a.m. on Thursday, November 28, 2024, when Joseph Pronesti president of the association, goes to the Nîmes site. “I was beyond shocked. My first thought was how are we going to deliver to people in need?” The Gard Food Bank had in fact 42,600 beneficiaries end of 2023, a figure which would increase at the end of 2024, according to the president's forecasts : “I hope I’m wrong, but we would be closer to 45,000 this year.”
An online prize pool for the Gard Food Bank
Joseph Pronesti is at the head of the Gard Food Bank, in which 101 volunteers are involved. (@Banque Alimentaire Gard)
La distribution was however able to be ensured in the days following the fire, thanks to solidarity chain which was quickly put in place and responsiveness of volunteers. Local businesses and associations have loaned equipment and the association rented two Petit Forestier trucks. Committees from other regions, such as the Bas-Rhin Food Bank, have reportedly offered to lend vehicles. Outstretched hands that “allowed us to find courage and start again”is moved by Joseph Pronesti who suspects arson.
And no injuries is to be deplored, the replacement of this fleet of vehicles costs nearly 480 000 €. The Gard Food Bank launchedan online prize pool. It will initially be used to pay for the rental of refrigerated trucks, and, depending on the amount collected, part of the purchase price of new vehicles.
139,845 kg of food collected by the Food Bank
This fire is barely happening a week later the association's national collection, which took place on the weekend of November 23-24, 2024. A campaign which “worked really well”, as the president reports: 139,845 kg of food harvested, i.e. 8 tons more than the year 2023. “We were all happy with the collection, and now this disaster has turned everything upside down.”
The territories at the bedside of the Gard Food Bank
Each territory of Gard notes, throughout the year, the essential help what the association brings to vulnerable people and people in situations of poverty, victims of food insecurity. As its name suggests, the Food Bank plays a role in supplying the entire local fabric with essential commodity.
“In a department which is the fifth poorest in France, the Food Bank must be able to continue its work”, estimates local communities. This is why 13 intercommunal authorities in Gard undertake to financially support the structure, up to their demographic weight and their means: Nîmes Métropole, Alès agglomeration, the Rhone Gard agglomeration, Beaucaire Terre d'Argence, the Pays d'Uzès, Rhony Vistre Vidourle, Petite Camargue, the Pays de Sommières, the Pont du Gard community of communes, the Cévennes Piedmont, Terre de Camargue, De Cèze Cévennes and the Viganais Country. In total, €100,000 in direct aid were gathered.
“It is all the Gard of the territories, of all moderate political sensibilities, who are mobilizing behind the Food Bank in this difficult moment that it is going through”, indicate with one voice the mobilized territories.
Beyond that, the signing presidents send a sincere message encouragement and moral support to all the volunteers of the Food Bank, to President Joseph Pronesti and all those who work alongside him for a real solidarity.
