Elmer Smith: Fires forge community spirit

THE LINE OF PEOPLE picking up motion sensors at Coatesville City Hall had slowed to a trickle by lunchtime yesterday.

Nearly half of the 1,000 security devices would go in the first two days of distribution. Frightened residents seized upon anything they could get or do to ease their anxiety.

The $11,000 that the city paid for the sensors will buy a small measure of relief. Community groups and churches have organized to house and clothe victims and to clean up the combustible materials that arsonists have used to start 18 fires in the last six weeks.

In fact, the fire-starters have unified the town and mobilized its citizens. People have responded so generously that volunteers struggle to get the help out as fast as it comes in.

"I've never seen anything like it," said Jim Garner, a Goodwill volunteer manning the phones at the Community Youth and Women's Alliance, on Lincoln Highway. "People have donated so many clothes that the Tabernacle Baptist church ran out of storage room.

"We had people just leaving a funeral who donated the cooked food they didn't use. Even at a time like that, they were thinking of these victims."

"It's coming from everywhere," said Pamela Depte, the church clerk at Tabernacle Baptist. "They come from New Jersey and Delaware. I get calls from people all over the country asking what they can do.

"I'm pretty sturdy. But the love they've shown for our little city has even brought me to tears," Depte said.

"I see people hugging each other on the street and just embracing each other. It's beautiful."

The fires are just the latest blow for a town that has struggled to stay afloat since massive layoffs at the Lukens Steel plant snatched the foundation from under the local economy a generation ago. But they have learned to roll with the punches.

The people I talked with in the lunchtime crowd at the Double D Diner and among the patrons at the Turkey Hill convenience store seem to take it all in stride.

But then, night falls and the tension that is barely detectable in the daylight disturbs their peace.

"People are sleeping on the first floor of their houses, fully dressed," said Ernest Berke, who lives in neighboring Thorndale. "They're afraid they won't hear their alarms or smoke detecters in time to get out."

It's not an irrational fear. One woman has died in an arson blaze in Coatesville. Victims of the last two fires were on the first floor of their houses and still didn't hear the intruders who set fires in the rear of their houses.

"You react to everything," Depte said. "A skunk got into our trash can. The smell woke me up. I thought, 'Is that gasoline or what?' "

People are keeping their lights on at night. They remain in a state of alert until daybreak.

Investigators from a special task force of city and state police run down every lead but still seem baffled by the random nature of the arsons that have sprung up all over this two-square-mile town.

As the frustration and pressure mount, local officials are increasingly concerned that residents will take matters into their own hands.

"I heard one guy say, 'The cops better get them before I do,' " Garner said. "He sounded serious."

It sounds serious to city officials, who have discouraged the efforts of residents to form patrols organized by Guardian Angels from Philadelphia.

"We don't want any community patrols of any kind right now," said city spokesman Kristen Geiger.

"Officers from other communities who are helping out don't know our citizens," said Kristen Geiger, a city spokesman.

"We don't want any confusion."

So the people of Coatesville spend their days cleaning up refuse, standing in line for motion detectors and reaching out to each other.

At night they keep their porch lights on, sleep closer to the exits and wait for the terror to end. *

Send e-mail to smithel@phillynews.com or call 215-854-2512. For recent columns: http://go.philly.com/smith