Brisk Relief Effort For Fire Victims

At 11:15 a.m. Thursday the call to help residents who lost their apartments in went over the town’s telephone notification system.

By 4 p.m., more than 75 people had squeezed through doors and dropped off sweaters, pants and shirts, sneakers and boots, and coats and hats.

Town Treasurer Denise Dembkoski said the response began before the call went out.

“Everybody wants to help,” she said. 

Some residents have offered their homes as temporary housing for the displaced people.

One of the families left homeless helped with the clothing collection, sorting and folding clothes to be used by them and others who had lived in the building.

The town is in touch with all of them. They are two families, each with one child, and the rest are adults.

They are staying in either Swampscott or surrounding towns with family or friends, and at least one family is receiving housing assistance from the American Red Cross.

Dembkoski said it was heart wrenching to see the 12-year-old boy so upbeat after losing everything.

At one point he told his mother: “I didn’t realize there were so many people who liked us.”

Anne Gold was one of the residents who arrived with clothes to donate.

 She stayed and donated her labor, too. She joined others folding and sorting the mountain of clothing.

“It really touched me,” Gold said.

Donations were as small as the single small bag that a little girl carried inside and as large as the 12 garbage bags of clothes that a man hauled in Town Hall.

The town has received plenty of clothes for the 11 adults and two children.

Now, if people want to donate, the need is for bedding, towels and toiletries, said Andrew Maylor, the town administrator.

Those who care to donate gift cards or gift certificates may do so at the selectmen’s office at Town Hall, he said.

Maylor conceived the help idea. 

The need was clear. He knew the desire to give would be there. 

So it made sense to make Town Hall the relief center, a familiar place with parking, rooms and helping hands.

The town treasurer organized the relief drive.

At 4 p.m., Town Hall’s first-floor hallway was thigh-high on one side with clothes and footwear.

The first-floor conference room was wall-to-wall clothing. 

At 4:21 p.m., nine minutes before Town Hall closed, people were still arriving with clothing.