WATSONVILLE—During the COVID-19 outbreak, Watsonville’s Blume Distillation has decided to expand its production line to help its community.
The facility, which provides biorefinery equipment and alcohol-based fuel, developed a line of hand sanitizers, hoping to slow the spread of the coronavirus.
“This crisis affects everyone,” said Blume Distillation Vice President Tom Harvey. “That’s why we all need to work together.”
For the past six weeks, Blume Distillation has provided its sanitizer to various organizations and agencies, including a large donation this week to the Santa Cruz County Office of Education.
Local businesses such as breweries are also helping out, donating leftover product for inputs.
“People have been reaching out,” Harvey said. “It’s been a real community effort.”
And many are trying to not only make a difference in their own community but across the country as well.
Watsonville acupuncturist Suzanne Snyder, L.Ac., her husband Fred Vasquez and local nurse Elizabeth von der Ahe have teamed up with Blume Distillation to deliver sanitizer products to the Navajo Nation, a Native American territory covering 27,000 miles across Utah, Arizona and New Mexico.
The Navajo Nation has been hit hard by the coronavirus. As of Wednesday morning, there were 1,321 positive cases within the region. Forty-eight people have died since March 17. This is an infection rate 10 times higher than neighboring Arizona, and a rate behind only New York and New Jersey.
Vasquez, whose relatives live on the Navajo Reservation, said the Nation was always more susceptible, as many live in high-density housing without enough healthcare facilities, healthy food or running water.
“Their lives were already difficult before the virus hit,” Vasquez said. “There are high rates of conditions like diabetes, cancer and heart disease on the reservation. This has just compounded the problem.”
Ahe, a local labor/delivery nurse who grew up on the Wind River Reservation in Wyoming, was concerned with how COVID-19 was affecting Native American communities. When she found out her friends Snyder and Vasquez knew Blume Distillation CEO David Blume, she saw an opportunity to help.
Originally, Ahe’s plan was to personally deliver the products while traveling through New Mexico for contract work. But after that work was canceled, she, Snyder, Vasquez and Blume Distillation decided to ship the products instead.
The first two batches of the sanitizer shipped to the Navajo Nation this week. More will be sent there and to the Great Sioux Nation—and possibly others.
“We’re figuring out things as we go,” Snyder said. “We hope that this small gesture can help, and bring awareness to these people’s situation.”
David Blume said his company will continue to find new ways to support the health and well-being of communities near and far through the pandemic.
“It is our responsibility, and our privilege to give back,” he said. “To our own community and beyond.”
•••
For information visit blumedistillation.com. You can directly help the Navajo Nation by donating money and/or supplies to its official COVID-19 Relief Fund at nndoh.org/donate.html.
