Crime & Safety
Local Firefighter Spearheads Effort to Aid Tornado Victims
Channahon's Ryan Jandura says helping others is his calling. And he and two friends returned home from a trip to Oklahoma with a piece of "Moore" to remind them of the job at hand.
Whenever a call goes out for help, Ryan Jandura answers.
It’s his job.
Jandura, 34, has worked as a firefighter and paramedic with the Channahon Fire Protection District for the last 14 years.
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It’s also in his DNA.
“Some people refer to it as a calling, and that’s probably the easiest way to put it,” said Jandura, who has spearheaded one local effort to aid victims of the tornado that ravaged Moore, Okla., a couple weeks ago.
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“You feel like you have to go, whether it’s a trauma-related incident here or somewhere far away. When you’re in this line of work, you feel affected no matter what it is—we refer to 9/11 a lot. That’s day everyone remembers.
“But, even being here, and having that happen in New York, you feel it. You feel the need and the compassion to want to go and help, and that’s your first instinct. ‘What can I do to help? How can I go help these people?’
“You’re trained to think that way, yes. But, when there’s a call, you want to go and help, no matter where it is, whether it’s Katrina or all the incidents on the East Coast with the hurricanes that just went through. You see the devastation on TV.
“And that’s how it was with Moore. I saw it TV. I was watching on CNN. And, just right away, I was like, ‘Oh, my god. I need to call someone. I need go to there. I need to do something.’ ”
And that’s what Jandura did.
He called the president of the fire department in Moore, Okla. Soon, he had an email from the Oklahoma City Firefighters Association and a list of items the firefighters needed. He called a long-time friend.
And he was on his way to Oklahoma with food, water, clothing, hygiene products—enough basic necessities to fill his own pickup truck and a trailer, too. He set out on Memorial Day weekend to deliver the goods with Sean Ragusa, a former Channahon firefighter who now works with the Chicago fire department, and Christina Diamond, CEO of Yorkville-based Women in Need.
Ragusa stood up in Jandura’s wedding and once was Jandura’s boss. The two remain in close contact and remain committed to their calling—answering any call for help.They collected enough donations to fill entire rooms in the Channahon Fire Protection District and the Plainfield Fire Department as local residents chipped in after learning of Jandura’s efforts through social media channels.
Jandura, Ragusa and Diamond made it as far as Tulsa before a couple of tire blowouts left them stranded and feeling like they had failed on their mission. Then, a FOX television crew intervened and hooked them up with GUTS—a Tulsa church group also working to help tornado victims.
All of their relief goods were delivered to Moore. And, even before Jandura made it back to Channahon, he was planning a return trip. Ragusa, Diamond and Diana Guzman made that second trip Moore, Okla., earlier this week, dropping off a second batch of goodies—10 pallets worth of supplies, enough to fill a 27-foot box truck—while Jandura remained in Channahon and on duty at the fire station.
And, he said, some or all of the tight-knit bunch, might head back again, only this time with boots, shovels and the mindset of getting dirty and assisting in cleanup efforts.
“When we lost the tire on trailer, we made it into a Chevy dealership down there,” Jandura said. “The workers at the dealership were coming over, asking us if we needed water, giving us phone numbers of local trailer repair places, trying to find us a tire and a rim.
“We made contacts down there—we exchanged numbers, we exchanged emails. Now, we have friends down there for life. They were amazed people from Chicago would come all the way down to help out. It was like they weren’t expecting it.
“They never would have thought that people from Chicago would make such an effort to get down there to help them and they weren’t even in the affected area. So, they were inspired by what we were trying to do.
“And the people from the church that we ended up meeting through the FOX affiliate and the reporter that arranged that for us, they were just as grateful as well. Again, they weren’t affected. But they had been down there to the tornado affected areas. They had seen it, and they knew this stuff—the food and the water and the clothing—was desperately needed.”
Jandura said he and his friends returned home with the satisfaction of doing a good deed and with a piece of Moore that came their way in a strange twist to the story that would have ended on a much less memorable note without the friendly purr of a stray cat.
“When we changing the tire on our trailer at the Chevy dealer in Tulsa, this cat came running up to us,” Jandura said. “It was a very friendly cat. It ran right up to Christina (Diamond), who was with us and practically jumped into her arms.
“The salesman who was there who had been helping us out said, ‘Oh, you guys should take that cat home. He’s been here for about a year. He comes and goes. We feed him and give him water. You should take him with you.’
“And Christina’s like, ‘OK, I’ll take it.’ She ended up naming the cat ‘Moore’ after Moore, Oklahoma. So, the whole spin on the story was we ended up bringing a little bit of Moore back with us even though we didn’t make it to Moore on that first trip.”
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