Enclosed pic of 5 shops burning at New Norfolk a town of 12,000 people where I am currently living.
Only due to the massive efforts of emergency personnel to save the petrol station next door our lives and our town was saved.
A tiny shop called Cheeky’s made 100 free coffees which I ran in trays to these heroic people.
I went next door to McDonalds and asked them for a donation of 20 breakfast muffins as I could see the emergency personnel were saturated and freezing cold and were wilting after many hours of extra-ordinary hard work.
McDonalds said no.
I offered to come back this morning and pay and they said no.
I asked them to ring for authorization and they said no.
I have not in 55 years been so abysmally ashamed of a shop. If the petrol station had caught fire McDonalds would not be any longer there.
I will to my dying day never spend another cent at McDonalds.
I feel as a civic duty we should each and every one of us care more towards our fellow members in our community.
For 5 yrs I have tried through New Norfolk Council for a bench seat for the elderly to sit whilst waiting for a taxi and at 4 45am as a woman went into a diabetic flip we sure needed that bench which still has not been erected.
We lost 5 shops only because of an undermanned and underpaid workforce.
When I was in Cheeky’s I met a dripping wet Firey and I was asking for a sandwhich for the diabetic woman and he was also an ambulance volunteer and he dropped everything and went immediately to her … he works full time at the local Woolworths.
We each of us each day pass superhuman people and then we also pass people … who just give nothing at all to a community …
• See Ruth Howie’s pictures: here
