Helping People Get Through the Unknown

Tom Goebel, Helen Goebel and Mike Hofmann, Cold Spring, MN, April 15, 2024. Photo: Lynette Nyman/American Red Cross

On a frosty January morning in 2023, Tom Goebel was at home in Cold Spring, Minnesota. He was resting on the couch, icing an injured leg when he heard a ‘pop’ sound.

“Like a laundry basket dropping,” he says. Shortly after he heard another ‘pop’ – this time it was louder, more urgent. “I went to the laundry room and saw smoke coming from under the garage door.”

Tom dialed his wife, Helen, who happened to be out, taking his car to the repair shop. “Get out of the house,” she instructed. “Call 9-1-1.”

On crutches, Tom turned back to grab what he could, stood outside on the deck and waited for the fire department. But then, a chilling thought: What if this whole thing blows up? “I threw my crutches over and slid down the snow on my butt!”

Meanwhile, Helen returned home, her heart racing. “I didn’t know what was snow and what was smoke,” she says. Most importantly, she didn’t know where Tom was—until she learned he’d sought refuge at a neighbor’s house.

Despite firefighters doing the best they could to extinguish the blaze, it had a good head start and unfortunately their home was destroyed.  

“When you say you lost everything, people don’t understand,” says Tom. “Until you’re in this situation, it’s a little bit more real.”

Amid the chaos, the Red Cross stepped in. Mike Hofmann, a longtime volunteer who had known Tom since childhood, reached out.

“At first they didn’t want anything,” says Mike. “And then they called back. It was a cold, winter day. Two of us met them and we walked through what we could do to help them.”

Care included comfort kits, basic hygiene items, personal care essentials—the small things that matter most when everything else crumbles. “When you have absolutely zero a comfort kit is the biggest thing you’ve got going,” says Tom. “They helped us get through this land of the unknown.”

Later, they found some charred documents like birth and marriage certificates preserved in a safe. Even something as small and simple as a spatula for cooking was nowhere to be found.

“You think you know what you’re missing until you don’t have it,” says Helen.

The Red Cross responders helped them replace prescriptions and navigate their next steps through recovery.

“I didn’t know they came out for a fire like that,” says Helen. I thought they were more for major disasters.”

Local Red Cross disaster volunteers respond most often to home fires in their local communities. These “disaster action team” responders show up with care and compassion to disasters big and small.  

In the year since the fire, a time of staying with neighbors and living in other temporary housing, Tom and Helen are home, again, with a fresh start.

“We were always on the giving side. This was us on the receiving side,” says Tom. “Red Cross said, ‘step up and take this, that’s why we’re here, to help everyone.”

To learn more about the Red Cross and our support for local disasters, please visit RedCross.org/MNDAKS.