Raymond Shows Fire Can Only Devour So Much -- Townspeople Find Housing, Hope For Hotel-Fire Victims

How to help

Monetary donations to help people displaced by the Willapa Hotel fire can be made by check to the Willapa Hotel Unmet Needs Fund, P.O. Box 1425, South Bend, WA 98586.

RAYMOND - News reports of a midnight inferno that devoured seven businesses and 26 apartments here last month used a single word to describe what the residents lost: everything.

Not quite.

It's true that the 85 residents - nearly all of them Laotian or Cambodian immigrants and their children - lost food, clothing, furniture, money, photos, eyeglasses, medicine, immigration papers, even car keys as flames reduced a city block to rubble.

But as she fled the burning three-story Willapa Hotel, Pheth Luangsrinhotha, 35, gathered up her 18-month-old and 13-year-old daughters. Selone Now, 42, ushered all six of her children to an exit. And Samol Vann, 47, awakened his wife and four children, leading them to safety.

No one had time to go back for material possessions, but as every resident was accounted for outside, the fire victims realized they'd saved what was most important: each other.

Now, those families are drawing strength from something they might not have realized they had, the support of a community that's no stranger to hard times.

"People have been helping us a lot; they have been very nice," said Now, who looks no further than the rice cooker in her kitchen for evidence of the community's generosity. Earlier this month, every displaced family was given a new electric rice steamer and a 50-pound bag of rice.

Last week, they were invited to the local food bank after a special effort was made to gather ingredients for Asian cooking: jasmine rice, soy sauce, fish sauce and dried peppers.

And today, they'll be able to drop by a local market and select furniture donated by local residents.

The key to the sustained help for Raymond's fire victims is a grassroots committee with the less-than-melodious acronym WHUNC, the Willapa Hotel Unmet Needs Council, formed with the sponsorship of local ministers.

Bryan Harrison, council chair, said backers realized the emergency help provided by the Red Cross, including a month's rent assistance and a week's supply of food, was a welcome start - but only a start - in helping some of the area's poorest families.

"Just helping them find affordable places to live has been the biggest challenge," said Harrison, who also is Pacific County's community-development director.

Simple math tells part of the story. Apartments in the 87-year-old converted hotel rented for $200 to $250 a month. Modest rental units in the area, if they can be found, are about twice as much.

Although many of the displaced residents work, either for a local oyster processer or gathering ferns and salal used by florists, hours can be spotty and pay minimal.

In addition, Harrison said, many are unfamiliar with American banking and kept supplies of cash in their rooms - money that burned up in the fire.

The "unmet needs" council found apartments and rental houses, some of which hadn't been used in years, and helped clean them up, installing features such as smoke detectors and new electrical outlets needed to qualify for government rent subsidies.

Apartments still haven't been found for a couple of the families, now staying with relatives, Harrison said.

To outsiders, it may seem strange that a small town like Raymond, population under 3,000, has such a large concentration of Southeast Asian immigrants.

And some long-term residents admit local opinion was mixed when Laotian and Cambodian families began moving in more than a decade ago, first supported by local churches, then by one another.

But Now said she's always felt welcome in Raymond, and likes the small town for the same reasons the natives do. "It's good for kids, not like the big city, not so fast and scary," she said.

The unmet-needs group is also helping the hotel's three Caucasian residents, two men and a woman.

Economic hardship is nothing new in Raymond. The $1 million hotel fire, believed to have started in the kitchen of a ground-floor restaurant, is simply the latest tough news in a coastal town hit by the double-punch of declines in logging and fishing.

But hardships sometimes produce heroes, and Harrison cites the many 12-hour days put in by high-school senior Joe Praseuthsy, 18, son of one of Raymond's first Laotian families.

Praseuthsy didn't live in the hotel but has been a key interpreter for many of the Laotians who did, a task he has found rewarding, if exhausting.

"It's been like a video game," Praseuthsy said, "Things just keep coming at you. So many people. So many problems."

Bob DeWaayer of Vancouver, B.C., head of a partnership that owns the hotel site, said he'd like to build other low-income apartments in Raymond, but an insurance dispute is making it hard even to come up with the $100,000 or more it will take to clear the site.

Harrison, meanwhile, expects the volunteer council will be at work, soliciting funds and finding the most effective way to spend them, for many months, if not years.

He admits the community's efforts aren't totally selfless. Of the 85 people displaced by the fire, half are children and 26 are students in Raymond schools. If their families won't be able to afford to stay, state dollars to the local schools would be reduced.

"And we really want those kids to stay. After the upheaval of the fire, the only thing they have that gives them a bit of normalcy is school," Harrison said. "You don't want to take that little sense of community away."

Jack Broom's phone message number is 206-464-2222. His e-mail address is: jbroom@seattletimes.com