Friends Indeed Helpful Neighbors Help Ease Difficulties In Wake Of City’s Ice Storm

Spokane’s Good Samaritans were busy Wednesday, brightening the darkness of their neighbors’ lives with food, warmth and even some fun.

Corbin Park resident Shawnna Swan, 15, woke up at 6 a.m. to brew seven pots of coffee, whip together a dozen egg salad sandwiches and heat up several bowls of soup for four members of the Salter family, who live across the street.

The Salters’ house and the one next to it were the only two to lose power in a five-block cluster of homes near Corbin Park.

An old, ice-laden tree in the back yard of one of the homes split into a dozen pieces during Tuesday’s ice storm, ripping power lines to the ground and unplugging the homes. The residents are without heat, electricity and phone service - and have been told it’ll stay that way for at least another week.

“I just felt like they needed help,” said the North Central High School freshman.

“We sure appreciate what she’s done,” said June Salter, 30. “Without her, we’d be eating cold stuff.”

After she was done cooking, Shawnna, gloved and rosy-cheeked, began removing tree branches from the streets around her house. Her three friends - Brandee, Britnee and Brianne Lineback - helped clear a path for people to drive through.

The Lineback sisters said they felt they needed to do something more than enjoying the warmth of their home or watching TV all day.

“This is actually fun,” said Britnee, 14, as she lugged armloads of tree limbs to the curb.

“It feels good knowing you can help other people,” said Brandee, 15.

Her little sister agreed.

“It’s good to help because some people don’t have electricity,” said Brianne, 7. “We’re just lucky.”

In the Indian Trail area, neighbors pitched in to clear roads of fallen pine trees.

When one of them blocked Steve Chandler’s route home Tuesday night, he walked to his house, grabbed his lumberjack-worthy chain saw and returned to turn the obstacle into firewood.

Moments later, a score of other neighbors joined him, lifting logs and limbs out of the road.

“It was great. Everyone helped out and pitched in. It didn’t take long,” Chandler said. “We took care of this street, then we made sure everyone else was cleared out.”

There, as in other areas, neighbors traded supplies: milk for firewood; ground coffee for boiling water … then, they shared the brew.

Late Wednesday afternoon, the Yorba family was more than grateful for the stranger who walked up to their house in the 800 block of West Nora and started pulling pine branches from their yard, sawing them up and loading them onto a truck.

Garry Kline of Cheney was picking up his mother-in-law from St. Andrew’s Court, an apartment complex which closed at 5 p.m. because it had no heat or electricity.

Kline said helping was the least he could do, having been spared from the storm’s wrath. At his rural home, surrounded by trees, he lost only a handful of twigs.

When he saw the branches on the front of the Yorbas’ four-story pine tree had been sheared off during the storm, he decided to pitch in.

“Good men like that are hard to find,” said Susanne Yorba, 50. “He did all of it without gloves.”

“Tell my wife that, would ya,” said Kline, chuckling. “Really, it was nothing.”

Yorba and her six children, ages 2 to 28, dined on peanut butter-and-jelly sandwiches and chocolate chip cookies, then pasted signs on their front window for passers-by to heed.

“Send pizza. Send hot water. Cold kids inside.”

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Color photo

MEMO: “After the Storm” special section

The following fields overflowed: BYLINE = Jennifer Plunkett Staff writer Staff writer Kathy Mulady contributed to this report.