Putting the unity in community
This is getting to be routine. And not a good one. This time, it took place right in our back yard.
The day after Christmas, a massive fire roared through the Hilltop Condominium complex in Brookhaven.
Thankfully, all 100 residents managed to survive. They scrambled out into the cold and watched their homes go up in flames.
Most of the building - and their beloved possessions –was lost.
Wednesday they returned to the charred rubble to retrieve what they could, including a few priceless family heirlooms and pictures.
Some people literally lost everything they had.
What they did not lose is their standing in the community.
And as we have witnessed time and again in the past few months, the community has not forgotten them.
When neighbors are in need, there is one thing you can count on. Delaware County will stand and deliver.
It was a scene that has been repeated again and again and now has become hauntingly familiar.
We saw it when an inferno engulfed the Barclay Friends Senior Living Center in West Chester. In that disaster, four lives were lost. But incredibly, everyone else got out alive, including many who were evacuated still in their beds and wheelchairs.
The flames were still licking against the night sky when neighbors descended on the site to offer help - everything from blankets to those residents shivering in the night cold, to sustenance both physical and mental.
The West Chester community opened its heart with a massive outpouring of support and donations.
Much the same thing was seen when tragedy struck in Montgomery County. A fire roared through a home in Schwenksville, taking the lives of two small children of a Montgomery County sheriff’s department employee. Several fund drives quickly were set up to replace some of the family’s monetary loss.
Here in Delaware County, two recent events come immediately to mind.
Tonya and Mitchell Collins saw the reaction first hand as they stood in front of their burnedout Upper Providence home in a blaze that took place on Thanksgiving night. In the season of giving, their neighbors, family and friends - even total strangers stepped up to help.
The flames that devoured the Collins’ home had barely been extinguished when a neighbor posted messages on the Upper Providence Township, Media Elementary School and Penncrest High School Facebook pages.
The response was overwhelming.
A few miles away in Upper Chichester, it was a similarly heart-warming tale.
Tiffany Lane was struggling through a rough time in her life - not the least of which was seeing her home go up in flames. She reached out to a friend and former co-worker, Chris Malone.
He took it from there, organizing a massive effort to help rebuild Lane’s home.
She and her kids moved in this past weekend.
It will be awhile - if ever before the residents from the Hilltop blaze get back in their homes.
But just as in the other cases, the community is opening its heart to come to their aid.
Neighbors flooded the Brookhaven Municipal Center, where a donation drive already was being overwhelmed with donations of food, children’s toys, blankets, clothes and other necessities.
“Everybody is on board to help our borough residents here,” said Brookhaven Assistant Fire Chief Charles Leslie. “It’s a talented community with unity here. Everybody helps everybody along in this town.”
Sometimes it’s easy to forget that unity forms the crux of the word community.
But as we have seen time and again in the past few weeks, when the chips are down, we are all about community.