I have some new friends here in Foster City, a young family from Durban, South Africa. Let me tell you of an experience they had recently. It started with bad news but then it got progressively better.
Elfreda and Anton Strydom came to Foster City with their two fine sons, Johan and Rossouw two years ago. Anton is an electronics engineer with EFI. On Sunday evening, the 5th of January, they returned home from a day of surfing to find that their condominium building on Ram Lane was on fire.
Now, that?s the bad news. From here on it starts to get better and better. I am not going to tell of how they described the grand professional job of fire fighting they witnessed, which was excellent I might say, but rather I want to describe the ?above and beyond? support that they received. As Anton told me, ?They did so much more than just put out a fire. It was just unbelievable.
Now you have to recognize that the Strydoms are from another country where the concept of public safety as we know it in Foster City is almost non-existent.
As Elfreda and Anton described to me, there was a concerted and continuing effort to protect us, protect our possessions and to comfort and guide us through this ordeal. As an example, when they returned home they discovered that our fire personnel hand found and rescued one of Elfreda?s cats. When she explained, through tears, that there was a second cat still missing, well our people, and I don?t know how, went back into the building and rescued Elfreda?s second cat.
About that time, our little family was taken to our mobile communication center for incident management. You know that big white van you see conspicuously located at all of our community events. From the van, Red Cross was contacted and the following arrangements were made.
Each member of the family was provided an overnight kit, a hotel room was arranged and the family was given funding for (3) days subsistence, i.e. food, clothing and shelter.
While these arrangements were being made our police and fire personnel were taking all necessary precautions to retrieve and protect their personal property. (During all of this I think the cats were on Elfreda?s lap,) During that evening and over the next several days, our police were patrolling the property to protect it from vandalism and several times during that period both police and fire personnel checked with Elfreda and Anton to determine if our public safety people could be of further help.
Now, let?s go back to the Strydom?s home in South Africa where it was common procedure to sleep with a loaded pistol under your pillow. As I mentioned before, public safety wasn?t a viable concept there.
I asked Anton to summarize his feelings about this experience. He said: ?It was the best experience of our lives in a crisis situation.? (and I gather there were many crisis situations in South Africa!)
Elfreda and Anton feel that they are ?living in such a different, almost unbelievable world.? We just could not have expected so much concerned service, we are very grateful to Foster City , our public safety people and to America.
And we, you and I, we are spoiled. We ?take for granted? this magnificent quality of live of ours, and we surely should not. Prime Minister Tony Blair said it nicely. He said ?This United States must be quite a place. Every one is trying to go there and no one wants to leave.?
I want to take this opportunity to thank Elfreda, Anton and Johan and Rossouw for sharing their story and allowing me to express to you, how grateful we all should be.
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