And we can only do it here. Think about the rest later.

"People!" she said over the crowd's murmur, and waved her hands. "People, there's a plane crashed right downtown, and a fire burning out of control. And it looks like all the emergency services are out. They're going to need all the help they can get. Let's get what we can scrape up and go!"

Most of them followed her, Dennis swearing quietly, a bucket in one hand and a fire ax over the other shoulder; Juniper snatched up a kerosene lantern. Eilir carried the restaurant's first-aid kit in both arms, and others had snatched up towels and stacks of cloth napkins and bottles of booze for disinfectants.

She needed the lantern less and less as they got closer to the crash site. Buildings were burning across a swath of the town's riverside quarter, ending-she hadn't gotten her wish, and the fire covered the Squirrel's site. Heat beat at them, and towers of sparks were pouring upward from the old Victorians and warehouses.

If the plane was out of Portland, it would have been carrying a lot of fuel…

The streets were clogged with people moving westward away from the fire, many of them hurt, and they were blocked with stopped autos and trucks and buses too. Ruddy firelight beat at her face, with heat and the sour-harsh smell of things not meant to burn.

"OK," she said, looking at the… refugees, she thought. Refugees, right here in America!

First aid could make the difference between life and death, stopping bleeding and stabilizing people until real doctors or at least paramedics got there.

"We're not going to do any good trying to stop that fire by hitting it with wet blankets. Let's help the injured."

She looked around. There was a clear stretch of sidewalk in front of a hardware store where a delivery truck had rammed into the next building down; its body slanted people out into the road like a wedge.