WYOMING, Minn. – Thanks to the Wyoming Fire Department’s widely shared Facebook post, the community filled a truck with donations for a Wyoming, Minnesota family with three young children who narrowly escaped an overnight house fire.
Allie and Matt McQuillan remember waking to smoke alarms and seeing flames. Their children had already woken, confused in their smoke-filled rooms, when the couple grabbed their kids and ran for safety. The children’s bedrooms burned moments later.
The family installed smoke detectors only two and a half weeks prior.
“So, we are saying a lot of prayers of thanks, and it’s amazing this is our outcome,” said Allie McQuillan.
“And if it hadn’t been those brand new smoke detectors they put in, we wouldn’t have a story about a community’s compassion, we’d have a whole different story about five funerals today,” said Chief Paul Hoppe, Wyoming’s Director of Public Safety.
The Wyoming Fire Department has an “After the Fire” program where families displaced by fires receive a kit with toiletries, gift cards and essentials to survive in the days after a fire.
Knowing the McQuillans lost all their belongings with their home a total loss, the department put out a Facebook post, asking the community to step up and help, especially with diapers and clothing for the couple’s three children, ages 4, 2, and 9 months.
“Because they literally had nothing, not even the shirts on their back, so the community came out in forces with an overwhelming response to this family in support,” said Hoppe. “We call it the Wyoming Way. What we saw in Wyoming, the compassion in people exists in everybody, sometimes it just takes a slight reminder.”
The post was shared several thousand times, bringing more donations than the family could comprehend.
Allie McQuillan struggled to be on the receiving end of such overwhelming help, and now vows to pay it forward when her family recovers from their loss.
“It has been amazing, you can’t even comprehend literally losing everything, you don’t have a pair of socks,” said Allie McQuillan. “There is so much negativity and strife in our everyday lives, most people just want to do good and be good. It is so appreciated.”
“We knew we had some wonderful neighbors, but I guess I didn’t know that goodness could spread through a community,” Matt McQuillan added.
To help the family with donations, or help fund “After the Fire” kits for families affected by fires, contact the Wyoming Fire Department here.