The fire at Wade’s Mobile Manor on March 5, left eight families without homes or possessions and destroyed ten trailers. This led to a generous outpour of donations from the Laramie community.
“I want to say the capacity for giving in the community of Laramie is just … awesome,” Director of Interfaith-Good Samaritan, Mike Vercauteren, said. “It’s really wonderful.”
Before they were identified as the organization responsible for handling the donations or long-term care of the families involved, Vercauteren said the phones started ringing with calls from community members wanting to help as early as Monday afternoon, the day of the fire.
“It was spontaneous,” Vercauteren said. “People heard of the fire and began reaching out.”
The public response was overwhelmingly strong to the point of Interfaith needing to call in extra volunteers to help take phone calls and receive incoming donations.
In deciding how donations will be divided, Vercauteren said, “We have developed a little formula because we wanted to be fair to everyone. It’s a formula based on the number of people in need. We want to make sure that each family displaced gets a basic amount and then it’s based upon the number of people in the family.”
On Tuesday, March 6, Interfaith-Good Samaritan and United Way of Albany County held a meeting where they contacted 16 organizations to discuss what was needed for the families displaced by the fire and by the following day, Wednesday, $10,000 was received. Though the number continues to grow with each passing day, as of Thursday, March 22, the amount raised through Interfaith totaled $46,000.
“I knew we were uniquely positioned to bring together all the human services in the community so that we would have an organized, effective and efficient way of reaching out to these folks,” Paul Heimer, executive director at United Way of Albany County, said.
Various organizations throughout Laramie have had a hand in gathering necessary items. Red Cross, Soup Kitchen, Laramie Foster Closet, Elks, Eagles Club, Salvation Army, Department of Family Services, SAFE Project and Ace Hardware – to name a few – have all, in various ways, helped to get these families some of their possessions that were lost in the fire.
Heimer said donations will continue to be accepted for another week or two.
“The biggest thing we need is cash,” Heimer said. “Small or big, it’s all good.”
To help address the need of affordable housing for the families, Anastasia Brady, campaign assistant at United Way, said, “Right away, there were several landlords who brought in listings. A couple people offered trailers that they could have.”
From the Clothing Cottage accepting clothing donations to the Developmental Preschool and the First Baptist Church of Laramie accepting household items, the people of Laramie have painted a picture of what a generous community looks like and how they band together in times of crisis to help those effected.
