Columnist Susan Snyder: Out of the ashes comes compassion

Tuesday, July 11, 2000 | 9:07 a.m.

Susan Snyder's column appears Tuesdays and Sundays. Reach her at snyder@lasvegassun.com or 259-4082.

It's been almost a year and a half since the tragedy that linked Joe Planck and Elizabeth Gonzalez, but he says it's still hard to visit her.

But he promised he would. So from time to time Planck stops in to see Gonzalez at the Caesars Palace employee cafe where she works.

They greet with smiles and hugs. The respect is mutual. So is the pain, though it's tougher to see. Neither wears it on the outside.

Planck and Gonzalez met under the very worst of circumstances. But something very good has kept them in touch. It's a county firefighters' fund that raises money for people who have fallen victim to fire.

Planck is Clark County's assistant fire chief. Gonzalez is a 26-year-old mother who lost three of her four young sons in a fire that engulfed their mobile home Feb. 9, 1999.

He can hardly talk about that day without anguish choking his voice. Recollection brings a collage of painful, vivid images:

Firefighters tortured by the impossibility of rescuing the boys, ages 2, 4 and 5; an 18-month-old toddler growing up without his siblings; Gonzalez's arms bloodied by her futile attempts to save her children by yanking a window from the burning home.

"She was just overwhelmed," Planck said. "And I made a promise to her that day we'd always be there for her."

They have been. County firefighters held fund-raisers and canvassed local businesses to come up with $100,000 worth of money and goods that enabled them to give Gonzalez a brand new, fully furnished mobile home and cash to get started again.

A few weeks ago Planck delivered another check to the young mother so she could take a much-needed vacation with her son, who turns 3 in August.

But Gonzalez isn't the only one to benefit. Two weeks ago firefighters gave $500 and a new television set to a 16-year-old girl who saved her 18-month-old sister and the family's pets from a fire that destroyed their home.

Planck said when they gave the teen $500 to buy clothes for herself and her four siblings, she said they were going to buy a television because the family never had one. So they gave her clothing money and the new TV to boot.

Firefighters raise money on their own time with car washes, athletic events and promotions such as a recent House of Blues concert that raised $8,000. They don't use professional fund-raisers or telemarketers.

They created the fund in November 1998 because they wanted to do something for a family who had lost two little girls in a blaze.

Fire destroyed Gonzalez's home three months later. After helping her, Clark County's firefighters decided to help anyone they could regardless of jurisdiction or circumstances.

On Saturday they washed cars to pay for extensive dental work needed by the mother of a 15-year-old burn victim and to help pay for another woman's bone marrow transplant.

All of it violates a rule Planck learned as a rookie. An old-timer told him to "never grieve with the family." Firefighters must walk away, the veteran said.

"But sometimes you just can't," Planck said. "It stays. We're scarred for life."

And a promise is a promise, after all.