Community helps ranch in fire crisis
When the Brush Creek fire forced the evacuation of our therapeutic boarding school program, we saw the best of the heart and energy of a caring community. First to be named are the firefighters, volunteer crews, law enforcement, and emergency response agencies. They stood on the "front line" to protect first the young people whose safety has been entrusted to us.
Who of us would place ourselves at such personal risk to protect others? We owe them great gratitude. The network of first responders is largely invisible to our community until the time of crisis. The American Red Cross stepped forward with cots for our students to sleep on. A local church provided temporary housing for a middle-of-the-night evacuation. Another nonprofit boarding school program and the Boy Scouts of America provided extended access to space while we are not able to occupy our program home. We found in our staff the resource to carry out responsibilities above and beyond their job description with commitment and calmness. We valued having a supporting Board of Directors to lean on for direction.
After the first response to this crisis, we received an enormous outpouring of support from businesses, nonprofits and individuals in the community. A string of callers asked, "How are you doing? What can we do to help?" Church camps around Glacier Lake helped us look for space options. Realtors in the community put out the word, looking for empty buildings that could be used on a temporary basis.
Where did this personal and organizational capacity come from? It has always been here. Only in a crisis does it become so evident. It is the core of what is best about this community. Those of us who have raised families in rural communities know something of this strength. It is families, individuals and businesses responding to community needs, not for some gain, but simply because it is the right thing to do.
From crisis comes opportunity. We learn as a community what leadership really means. We learn to be good stewards of our resources and to stretch them to most efficiently meet the greatest needs. We remember the difference between needs and wants. We learn to think outside the box. We learn the importance of good communication. We experience the joy of knowing that others care, and that we are not alone. We learn to pull on the deepest resources of our faith when we are afraid and feint of heart.
One day the Montana fires will be a story we tell to our children. From having weathered this crisis together we will know more of who we are as individuals, as organizations, and as a community. We will look back and say that we grew together from this experience. Hopefully the good communication and caring and the understanding of what is really most important in life, will endure long after the last of the smoke has cleared.
Linda Carpenter is executive director of Hope Ranch/Star Meadows Academy. Hope Ranch is a nonprofit therapeutic boarding school program serving 13- to 17-year-old girls outside of Whitefish.