Lincoln community brings water, food in wake of massive fire

LINCOLN, Ill. (WAND) — A strong fire in downtown Lincoln brought fire crews from all over to help battle the blaze. The news quickly spread through social media and large amounts of water and food were brought to help first responders.

"A big amount of Gatorade. It was great. Some of the first responders were asking for that," Rachel Oney, the Director of the Lincoln Salvation Army, said. "It just kept on coming because they saw the need. It was really nice to see multiple restaurants, even gas stations — both Casey's and Thornton's brought out food."

People were not showing up to just drop off a case of water or some food. They volunteered to stay and make sure everyone had what they needed.

"It was really, really nice to see," Oney said. "Sometimes it's difficult to get volunteers generally, but when the moment came for people to do something, we had at least four different volunteers that stayed for multiple hours that weren't even on our call list."

Oney does hope that people will continue to help those who were affected by the fire in the coming weeks and months.

She elaborated, saying, "A lot of times after a big thing, you'll get a big influx at that moment, but then once that stops going and everyone else goes back to their normal routine, you're left with still picking up the pieces and there's still a need."