worcester to charleston

The horrific fire in Charleston this week made me pause and reflect. What a horrible tragedy for the entire town. There is not one person in the greater Charleston area that will not be affected by the loss of nine firefighters in some way, even if they never knew these people.

In 1999, December 3rd, to be exact, the Worcester Cold Storage Warehouse went up in flames. It was a fire started by two homeless people seeking shelter from the chill. At the time, I was living about a mile from the scene, but I was on the other side of town with some friends that evening. Yes, I remember...we'd all gone out for coffee after a particularly stressful week at work, which turned into going for dinner and simply venting and laughing and kvetching about the stress and dysfunction that the school administration poured on us.

Yeah, right. The next 48 hours showed us we knew nothing about real stress. Everything is relative.

I remember getting out of my car and hearing sirens. Now Worcester is a city of nearly 200, 000, so sirens had always been a part of life. Nothing unusual there. But then I kept hearing warning blasts from a fire truck horn, and thinking, "Hm, I wonder what's going on?"

About that moment, I noticed the acrid smell of something burning, and looked up to see the night sky thick and dense with smoke. I went into my apartment, turned on the TV, and it was everywhere on the news: The Cold Storage Warehouse was burning, and six firefighters were unaccounted for. By the end of the weekend, they had been found and identified...and it was awful.

I didn't know them well personally...but I knew them on sight. Several had conducted fire drills in some of the schools that I'd worked in...another had come to give the kids at a special needs summer camp rides on the truck...a couple more had frequented the diner where I used to play on the weekends. And now they were history.

There was a pall over the city of Worcester that lasted well into January. There was no Christmas that year in my city...malls were strangely quiet, the hubbub and pace of the commercial Christmas was missing. Ironically, churches were full. Hands reached out to the families, the brotherhood of firefighters who were hurting so badly. The Today Show covered our story. Bill Clinton himself showed up for the memorial service, not that that gesture endeared him to me any more...but it shows you the magnitude of our loss. The procession to the service was more than an hour long, and included firefighters from all over the country...and from Canada...Belfast, Dublin, London...it was overwhelming. There was not a dry eye along the route downtown. TO not be touched by this, you must have been made of granite. To this day, I cringe when I hear bagpipes playing "Amazing Grace." And I was just a simple citizen, with no personal emotional tie, except that the loss to our city was huge.

So Charleston has been heavy on my heart these days. They will experience that which we did almost nine years ago.

Father, please be very present in the city of Charleston, just as you were in Worcester. Lord, please hold them through the grieving, which is going to be considerable. And when the weeping is at last over, Lord, please show them joy in the morning, in Your time, which is always the best time. Send angels in the form of humans to hold them through this season. In the name of Jesus, we pray,

and AMEN.