On the Facebook group Rim Guardian Angels, residents have pleaded for help and found ways to help one another or share information, including where to get food after heavy snow damaged roofs and closed two of three area grocery stores. Neighbors online offered to help check on older neighbors or shovel people out.
Earlier in the week, one resident wrote on the group asking for a plow or a ride to make an appointment with a transplant doctor. On Thursday, a disabled veteran with cancer posted that he needed help: “I wanted to know if someone could dig us out …. I missed chemo and am running out of meds. I couldn’t get out my front door.”
The storm caught many off-guard, said Andrew Braggins, a 43-year-old wedding planner and one of the administrators of the group. His own ceiling in his Crestline home bowed under the weight of five feet of snow, he said.
“We’re at the 4,500-foot level. We get maybe 10 days of snow a year total, and it’s usually maybe a foot at the most,” he said. “No one in this town was prepared for this.”
