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Fire victims grateful for everyone’s help

Editor, Index-Tribune:

    

  It’s a week since a fire destroyed our home in Boyes Hot Springs, memorably documented in the front page photo on last Tuesday’s Index-Tribune.

  In this thanks-giving season, we find ourselves with much to be thankful for. Our family survived unharmed. The first responders prevented the fire from spreading into our neighborhood. Our insurance company has our backs, and we have the resources to rebuild our lives.

  And we’ve been blessed in the generosity and loving concern of our friends, family, neighbors, strangers, the entire Sonoma community who’ve overwhelmed us with their response. After a loss a like this, there’s little time to acknowledge each offer and expression of concern. Nor is there space in this letter to thank all the individuals who came to our assistance, who continue each day to offer help against our need.

  We don’t even have names for many of you. But you know who you are, and we want you to know how grateful we are and will always be.

  We do want to make a particular shout-out, though, to FISH and their volunteers. If you feel compelled to help and haven’t found the right way to do it, just check with FISH and see what they need. They’ll pay it forward for all of us.

  And please look up the local emergency response numbers and put them on your cell phone’s speed dial. Use them instead of 9-1-1 if you’re forced to make an emergency call on your cell. It’ll save minutes over having your call shunted first to a centralized state facility before being passed to local first responders, and minutes can matter in an emergency.

  It’s probably true that wherever you go in the world, you find communities that look out for each other, love and care for each other, feel each other’s pain and need. Our family knows beyond any doubt that Sonoma is one of these communities. We’re not just thankful to be living, but to be living here.

  The rest is just stuff.

  Roy Jimenez and Risa Aratyr

Sonoma