Count Your Blessings: Amish Family Escapes Home Fire Unscathed
After a heavy news week, I just wanted to leave you with a story which – while I’m not quite sure you can call it “good” news – it’s at the least a count-your-blessings type of story.
There’s not a ton to this, but it’s been reported that an Amish family was able to escape a house fire in a community in upstate New York. The report comes from WWNY-TV7:
TOWN OF DEKALB, New York (WWNY) – Members of an Amish family escaped their burning home without injury Thursday afternoon.
Fire broke out at 594 Old Canton Road in the town of DeKalb at around 3:30 p.m.
The family was able to remove a lot of furniture and other belongings from the first floor.
When firefighters arrived, they found flames and smoke coming from the house.
There’s not much more info than that, other than that the home is a total loss. But I see at least three positives here.
First on the plus side, everyone survived. Fires seem to happen often enough to Amish families, and the outcome is not always so happy.
For another, it sounds like they got a lot of things out from the home. I’m going to surmise that you’ve probably got more of your important “stuff” on the ground floor to begin with. So hopefully the family was able to retrieve their valuables – not only in the monetary sense, but in the personal or sentimental meaning as well.
The third positive is that this family is a part of a supportive community, which is sure to come to their aid in helping them get set up in a new place to live, both temporarily and permanently.
This Amish community is one of six in St. Lawrence County, New York’s leading county in terms of Amish population. Here’s the (brief) video report from WWNY, showing the blaze, and the efforts of the fire teams who converged on the DeKalb-area home:
Old Canton Rd. fire
Again, living in AZ I had not heard of this story. So sad that this
happened. But thank Heaven it happened during the day time.
I shudder to think of the outcome had this happened in the middle
of the night. I’m glad to learn they were able to save much furniture
from the first floor. Let us hope they were able to retrieve canned
food from their basement as well. These familiar items will help to
soften the blow in the days & weeks to come. And yes, the Amish act
of helping your neighbors is a marvelous thing. I wager they will have
a new home built by May or early June. Thank you, Erik for bringing us
this story. Please keep us updated if at all possible. I will call my church
today & put this family/community on our prayer list.
community
Amazing thing about the Amish is that while if this happened with an English family they would be struggling with the insurance company and desperately trying to find a place to live, the Amish will descend and build them a new home in no time!
Not that it isn’t devastating, but in this particular way, they will have an easier time of it.