Acted First, Throught About It Later

I opened up my email from Prompt A Day this morning to find the non-fiction prompt asking me “Do you dive in and do what is right or do you calculate risk and reward? What does it take to make you act?”

My mind wandered back …

I pulled into my driveway around 11:30pm on that warm Friday evening in June 1995. I’d just finished a fourteen hour shift and drove ninety minutes home. My thoughts were on getting my bed and sleeping off the stress of the past week.

I opened the truck door to the smell of smoke in the air. Not a campfire type smell. More something burning and shouldn’t be. I looked around saw nothing amiss. Something seemed off. I got in the truck and headed south down the township road.

It took me into a lakeside hamlet. Driving through the hamlet, nothing was amiss except for the smell of smoke. I was over a mile from my house. Something wasn’t right. I decided to head into town, completing the big rural block. I’d either find the problem or go home and find out tomorrow from the small town grapevine.

Turning onto the western most street of town I saw a glow in the sky. I was approaching the source of the smoke. It was a three-storey apartment building fully engulfed. The tenants were going to need a place to shelter. I was in charge of the place in town that had been recently designated as an emergency shelter, the local Legion branch.

When the committee met to talk about emergency plans it was more thinking about a pileup on the freeway or a train derailment but shelter needed is shelter needed. I turned around and headed to the branch which was just about to close their bar for the night.

I arrived to find a few people still there. Thankfully people who would step up and help out. I told them about the fire. They immediately had the same thought as me, shelter for the tenants. They also would prepare coffee and sandwiches.

I left them to find the local grocer and get what they would need. I went back to the fire to find the tenants. I returned to find a school bus had arrived summoned by the fire department to transport the tenants to shelter.

One of the good things about small towns, people know each other. I found the bus driver. We chatted as we watched the efforts to contain the blaze. I let her know the branch was getting setup to shelter the tenants and asked where they were.

She turned to point to what had been a group behind her. None were there.

We talked to the police handling road closures. They had no idea where the tenants had gone. Thirty some odd people, who’d just lost their homes, had just disappeared.

I returned to the branch to inform the group preparing food we had no tenants to shelter. They had prepared dozens of sandwiches and two large pots of coffee while I’d been gone.

After a brief discussion we split the coffee and sandwiches between my truck and one of the other guy’s then drove up to either side of the fire to provide the firefighters with food and coffee for the rest of the night.

It would be Saturday night before I finally got into my bed.

The fire was stubborn, it would be well past daylight before they were able to extinguish it fully. As day broke, people started emerging from their homes shocked to see the carnage.

Around 8am a police officer approached me. People were starting to ask where to donate for the tenants. He didn’t know what to tell them. I decided we could use the hall at the branch for people to bring donations to. The tenants were going to need help, once we found them.

By 3pm the hall which could hold 200 people for a dance was wall to wall with donations. We still hadn’t made contact with any of the tenants. The nearest Salvation Army was about 20 miles away. It might be where tenants would call looking for help. I contacted a friend who worked there to give her a heads up that help was available locally.

There was twenty-four apartments in the building. The owner had told me at the scene there was one empty apartment. Most of the apartments were families and most of were low income. We needed to find them.

The next call went to the local radio stations asking them to broadcast announcements for people from the fire to come to the Legion. Signs were put up at the site.

It would be Sunday morning before we met the first of the tenants. Some of them were overwhelmed at the site of a room full of clothing, toys, bedding and more that the community had donated. As if the shock of losing your home and belongs wasn’t enough to deal with. The community show of support was at least hope for them.

We learned some had friends where they were able to crash and others had experienced strangers walking up to them and offering them shelter. That is where they had disappeared to the night of the fire.

By the time they started coming in a group of branch members, local clergy, service club members and Salvation Army had assembled to discuss immediate and longterm needs.

The next few days were busy helping the tenants with their immediate needs including navigating dealing with utilities like phone and cable.

I expected bureaucratic wrangling with the phone company. They were actually great. I was pleasantly surprised to hear them tell me, no problem, the tenants can call in to cancel their service at that location and when they get a new place, their phones would be installed, no charge. This was early 1990’s, landline era still.

The local cable company ended up almost being a problem. Some of the tenants came to me upset the cable company was going to charge them for the equipment lost in the fire. One had been told up to $500. I headed to the phone.

After arguing with two customer service reps and a ‘we have policies’ attitude, I got a manager on the phone. He was polite but didn’t seem to care any more than his reps. I pointed out the tenants hadn’t done anything to the equipment. They lost their homes and in the rush to get out with their lives, cable equipment wasn’t exactly a priority.

Still more of the ‘we have policy’ response.

I calmly pointed out there had been an outpouring of support for the tenants from the community and oh by the way, the media has been very interested in the story. Maybe I should let them know how great Ma Bell had been and what a villain the local cable company was being.

Suddenly, exceptions to the policy was possible.

I had acted in the moment when I opened the hall up for the initial stages of the relief effort. I’d not paused to consider upcoming bookings for the hall and the groups using it regularly. The donated items needed to be moved and quickly.

Thankfully, the local curling club wasn’t in use during the summer. The committee was willing to open the building and make it available as a base to work out of while getting the tenants resettled. A local trucker donated his rig and time to move the donated items from the branch to the curling club.

By the end of the summer we had the twenty-two tenants without insurance into new places. Their first and last months rent was covered along with clothing and furnishings to get them up and running again.

Remaining cash donations went into a Community Service fund we established that still continues to provide aid in the community thanks to ongoing community support. Remaining donated items went to homeless programs.

I’d acted based on the immediate need and then had to regroup and think through the needs afterwards. It was called for at the time. When I think about it, that has been largely how I respond to situations.

If there is immediate action that can be taken, and I have the means to do so, I act. Then sort other needs out as we go.

Some call me decisive. My critics call me reckless. Can’t please everyone.

Shadowspub is a writer from Ontario, Canada. She writes on a variety of subjects as she pursues her passion for learning. She also writes on other platforms and enjoys creating books you use like journals, notebooks, coloring books etc.

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