Donations Are Now Available For Fire Victims
Anne Fitzgerald's daughter and son-in-law still don't know whether their home at the north end of Cole Creek Road is still standing as firefighters grapple to get the blazes under control, she said Tuesday.
Fitzgerald also doesn't know the fate of a woman who lost everything in the wildland fire northeast of Casper and was reported was about to have her baby in the past couple of days, she said.
But she does know her daughter is about to deliver in December, and knows the needs of new mothers, so she brought large packages of diapers and other necessities for babies to the parking lot of the Life Steps Campus, 1514 E. 12th St., where volunteers were loading boxes of canned and other goods.
Kim Summerall-Wright, executive director of the Casper Housing Authority, said her agency received a call from Townsquare Media (K2 Radio's parent company) on Monday. The Housing Authority contacted Habitat for Humanity and other organizations which held a supply drive at the east-side Walmart on Monday.
The distribution of food and household items began at 10 a.m. today and will continue until 2 p.m. when the supplies will be moved set up at a building at the campus, Summerall-Wright said. After 2 p.m., fire victims should contact the Casper Housing Authority at 266-1388.
"If you are in need, or are displaced or need some assistance because of the fire, all you have to do is contact the Casper Housing Authority, and then we will bring you down here and make sure you will get everything you need to get you back home," she said.
Several families were helped yesterday, and the agencies helped seven or eight other victims as of noon, Summerall-Wright said.
"They really, truly are just in shock," she said. "Imagine going to work, and when you come home, you can't get home, so all you have is what you have with you."
The assistance is more than just handing someone a box, but it's a start.
Joe Dedic, Mike Clabaugh and Steve Wright passed canned and other goods back and forth and set them in boxes for those who will be coming later.
Dedic said the people he saw so far on Tuesday ranged from those who haven't been able to see their homes to those who know they've lost everything.
"Most of them are still in kind of a fog," he said.