Reacting to a Stressful Situation
What is your reaction to a stressful situation? Do you shut down or do you respond? Can you improve or change your action based on preparation.
I think our community experienced the definition of “stressful situation” as our downtown experienced a landscape changing fire that will alter how I and many others view and appreciate our community’s emergency services. I think that the result we saw was the preparation and planning for potential events like this and that situational planning saved the entirety of our downtown. Emergency services aren’t something we ever think about until our community needs them and are often overlooked, but when they are needed, our fire and police quickly showed their value.
We are so pleased with our downtown building owners and their efforts in development and redevelopment of many of our properties and with David Silverstein’s recent purchase of the former Belk block, we are confident he will find a way to overcome this setback. David is community and history minded and will likely do everything in his power to maintain the consistency of the structure’s appearance to the outside, but we are so fortunate to have thoughtful owners like David downtown.
This incident is never the way you want to test the training and knowledge of the community’s emergency services, but the results were nothing short of spectacular. None the less amazing was the police work that had an arrest in around 24 hours with a confession. We take all of this for granted, but these pieces of Morristown and Hamblen County’s puzzle is why our community thrives in the face of challenge all around us!