Omar Blanco was sifting through the vast mountain of rubble at the site of the collapsed condominium in Surfside, Fla., when he was approached by a stranger and offered something unexpected: a handwritten card on colorful construction paper.
“It stopped me in my tracks,” recalled Blanco, 49, a Miami-Dade Fire Rescue captain.
He paused and looked down at the note, written by a small child he had never met before. It simply said: “Thank you for what you’re doing.”
After a grueling week of physical, mental and emotional strain, Blanco said, the modest message moved him deeply.
“The innocence of children reminds us that the world is a beautiful place, no matter what tragedy we might be dealing with,” Blanco said. “Nothing is more comforting than a note from a child just to say thank you.”
So far, nearly 500 thank-you letters and notes of encouragement, crafted by children of all ages from near and far, have been hand-delivered to first responders at the scene of the tragedy, with hundreds more expected to pour in as the search for victims continues…
The structural collapse was worse than anything we’ve seen,” said Landau, 59, who is volunteering with
ZAKA Search and Rescue, a nonprofit based in Israel that sent rescue workers to help in the Surfside collapse. “The only good that we saw from this is the community. Everybody came together. To see kids writing such lovely cards, that gives us the courage to continue.”
I will keep it with me and share it with my kids and grandkids,” he vowed. “They should see how the world is supposed to be. These small kids are our future heroes and leaders, and our future first responders.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2021/07/04/surfside-collapse-first-responders-cards/
