Losing a child might be one of the worst things which can happen to a parent. Not knowing if you have lost a child is almost as hard.
After the fire at London’s Grenfell Towers, “Have you seen …?” is a common refrain.
Ramiro Urban thinks his daughter might have escaped. He doesn’t know.
She was making her way downstairs, fleeing the fire, when her phone died. He hasn’t heard from her since.
Her phone stopped as she was making her escape.
“I was at home but I was downstairs with a friend, and as soon as the fire started I tried to go upstairs and the firefighters were already in there and they wouldn’t allow me to go up there,” he said. “But she was out of the flat at 1:30, she was already making her way down with some people and her phone cut off and that’s it, we don’t know.”
Parents recruited friends to help search. They called area hospitals, hoping for any concrete news. They printed fliers and posted notes.
Natasha Green was walking through the neighborhood with a picture of a friend’s daughter.
“She got separated from her mum in the panic in the early hours of the morning and obviously as you can imagine as a mother she is frantic,” she said.
“She was told that she was at hospital,” Green continued. “She went to hospital only to find that it was the same name but the wrong girl and we’re just devastated and just so frantically looking for her.”
Before the fire, these children’s biggest fear was a scolding from a parent. Now, they fear to learn that their friends didn’t escape.
“I had a friend called Jessica, she’s still missing—she was on the news,” explained one young girl. “It’s horrible for me to hear that they’re missing or they’re dead or they’re like, in hospital or something.”
While parents search for children, neighborhood residents banded together to offer help.
They realized people fleeing the fire lost everything, so neighbors packed plastic bags with clothes, food, blankets—whatever they could spare that someone else might need.
They organized themselves to efficiently distribute supplies to the survivors.
Shelters were set up in a local sports center. Everyone who could donated food for the people who were suddenly homeless.
Tragedy always reminds us of our shared humanity.
It is sad that sometimes only disaster brings out our best.
The former residents of Grenfell Tower are grateful for whatever they can get.
What they really want is to find the people they love.
