Pocono News Section

Honesdale fire relief

Honesdale fire relief - Wednesday, September 24, 2008 at 4:54PM EST

Wednesday, Sep 24, 2008 @ 04:54pm EST

A Wayne County church is helping several families who lost everything in a fire last week.

Central United Methodist Church of Honesdale members bring in bags and boxes of goods.

Billie Shaffer of Mount Pleasant says, "It's always good to help. Because like i said, you never know when it's going to happen to you and thank god everybody was ok for the most part in the fire."

Shaffer is one of many who are trying to help victims of a big fire.

Last Thursday, fire destroyed two apartment buildings on East Street in Honesdale.

It left more than a dozen people homeless.

One church member says this donation drive was set up by a lady only known as "betty".

Pete Hennings of Honesdale says, "You just have good people that jump up and do stuff and betty and her daughter are some of those people."

Back at the fire scene, we talked with borough councilman Michael O'day Jr.

He says this debris should be cleared by weeks end.

They're also trying to reach the property owner, who lives in Arizona .

"We do have a few properties that don't seem to want to adhere to the laws of the town. This was one of them and we were working before this fire, before this catastrophe occurred to bring them into compliance," says O’Day Jr.

Anthony Komar of Honesdale is cleaning up a mess.

He says, "We're very happy the borough's taking action to get this cleaned up very quickly. Just this morning my son stumbled on the sidewalk on some of the debris and scraped his kneed. So i'm very happy to hear."

But until it's knocked down, police surrounds dangerous debris.

The church, located on 205 11th Street in Honesdale will be accepting items from 7 a. m. to 2 p. m through Friday.