Smoke isn’t usually part of the Sunday morning service at The Salvation Army’s Korean Community Church in Toronto. But on Sunday, May 4, 2008, exhortation turned into evacuation when thick clouds started blowing into the sanctuary and the alarms started pounding.
The Korean church meets in a large warehouse on Railside Drive, a facility in midtown Toronto owned by the Army and shared with several other ministries. The largest occupant of the building is the Railside Distribution Centre, where donated food and toys are sorted before being trucked to Army ministries throughout the Ontario Central-East Division. On that Sunday in May, a light bulb exploded, bits of burning metal fell onto boxes of toys and soon a roaring fire was underway throughout the 80,000 square foot facility.
When the Korean congregation saw the smoke they ran outside and called the fire department. By the time firefighters arrived it was too late to save anything. Anything not burned was lost to smoke damage or to the high powered sprinklers.
The damage was major─268 skids of food and 100,000 toys. According to Carol McDougall, director of risk management at THQ, the insurance claim for the building totaled $1.3 million. The value of the donated goods, which were not insured, was $3.2 million. “After the fire we really saw the community and suppliers rally around to help,” she says.
By the time the embers cooled, the Korean church had arranged temporary accommodation. The Broadview Enrichment program for developmentally delayed workers had found new locations to temporarily continue their work while cleanup and restoration of the Railside facility took place.
Relocating the distribution centre was a harder task. With 40,000 square feet of warehouse space plus equipment, it was hard to just pick up and move. But planning was underway to find a new home even while fire crews were battling the blaze. Within an hour of news of the fire getting out, Stefan Ciotlos, executive vice president and executive managing director of real estate giant CB Richard Ellis Canada and a member of the Army’s Toronto advisory board, was on the phone with Jeff Barrett, the divisional property secretary.
Ciotlos had worked his contacts and was able to report to Barrett that ING Real Estate had donated space for the PLUS program, a work-adjustment training program, and its 80 employees. And Grand & Toy, the office supply company, had offered a 40,000 square foot warehouse located just 2 km from the Railside location. “The response was immediate and very generous,” says Barrett.
The need to get the distribution centre operational again as fast as possible was acute. The centre supplies food to Salvation Army ministries throughout the Toronto region ensuring that 90,000 people eat every year. “For awhile we were completely homeless,” says Milton Parissis, CEO of the Railside Distribution & Ministry Support Services, who started his job just weeks prior to the fire. “We continued deliveries but stored everything in the trucks, sorting things in the parking lot. Grand and Toy’s offer of warehouse space meant we could get back to being fully operational.”
And it wasn’t just a spot to store and ship food. Grand & Toy quickly refurbished and offered a small suite of offices to the Army’s distribution staff along with an offer to stay as long as needed. “It was a spontaneous and magnanimous offer,” says Parissis.
For Grand & Toy the desire to help was quickly put into action. The warehouse, located behind their national head office, wasn’t in use and according to Kevin Edwards, the marketing vice president, there was a clear opportunity to help. “It wasn’t ‘why should we share the space?’ It was ‘why wouldn’t we?’ The impact The Salvation Army has on people meant that not only was the organization affected, but so were the vulnerable people they work with. We wanted to make them at home so their work could go on.”
Such community support is vital to the Army’s ministry. “The Salvation Army is so often helping others in need that it was incredible to have the corporate community step up and support us when the tables were turned,” says Captain John Murray, Divisional Secretary for Public Relations and Development. “The gift of space from Grand & Toy enabled us to quickly assess our needs and continue to provide services.”