At 3:15 pm, May 18, 2020, 16 households in Longchi Town, Mount Emei, Sichuan Province, suffered a fire due to circuit aging leakage, and made a heavy loss. Fortunately, nobody was injured.

Longchi Town is located in poor mountainous areas and the houses on fire were all made of wood. In this dry season, it’s easy to catch fire and unstoppable. In a hurry, large pieces of burning wood fell down with crackling sound, people cried miserably and hurried to escape. After they running out, it was too late for them to get their property back. Firefighters came and successfully put out the big fire after three fights.

The sixteen Homes built with painstaking efforts were destroyed and become black charcoal by ruthless fire. Neither their money or property were left, which will undoubtedly make their originally not rich lives even worse.

Sr. Meng Qingmei, who provides service there, told Jinde Charity: 4 of 16 households are Catholics, one of which is the family of a nun’s sister. This family is extremely embarrassed, and the husband is paralyzed walking on two crutches. In order to cure his disease, they spent all the savings even borrowed more than 10,000 yuan recently which was, unfortunately, burnt to ashes by fire. The whole family now falls into the bottom of darkness and was in agony.

The fire is merciless, an outbreak of love is there! After the fire, Bp. Lei Shiyin from Leshan Diocese quickly arranged accommodation and meals in the church, and asked the Sisters to appease the victims. At the same time, the Bishop also contacted the mayor and said: "If the government can't make arrangements, our church will provide place for so many affected households. Although the condition here is not good, they, at least, will have place to live and also the food." The mayor appreciated and replied "We're going through this together to overcome all difficulties!”

Jinde Charity immediately sets up an assistance project for these 16 families, hope that they could rebuild their homes as soon as possible with generous help from all society.