I thought that I knew disaster preparedness before. That mental reassurance didn’t derive from personal experience. After all — I’ve lived my whole live in Pennsylvania — home of Three Mile Island catastrophe as well as coal mining accidents from Throop to Scranton. But the last week taught me not only what I thought that I knew and more importantly what I didn’t know.

If you’ve visited Abington, Pennsylvania, and for those of us who are longstanding residents  —  you might get the impression that it’s like any other Philadelphia suburb. Just a short ride up Old York Road from Philadelphia,  Abington has made a history of being relatively quiet. Even for a community whose colonial roots were formed when William Penn bartered the land around Abington from the Lenni Lenape — the history of our disaster scenarios are largely confined to the British occupying our town in 1777 during the Battle of Whitemarsh and a fire in 1895 that decimated one of the state’s oldest Presbyterian Churches.

It was too close to home when a plane crashed just a few miles from Abington on Cottman Avenue during a busy Friday rush hour in January after taking off from Northeast Philadelphia Airport. It brought close the reality of how a disaster can hit home in any community. Not even a month later, we found out first-hand what we hadn’t ever had to consider before.

Two weeks ago, the facility erupted in flames into the night sky in Abington at SPS Technologies. The site is a manufacturer in the forefront of aerospace fasteners globally, and although the blaze thankfully avoided the area where the chemicals are housed, it still created an unfortunate disaster scenario in Abington and the adjacent area.

For as long as I can remember, my family would pass SPS Technologies on the way here or there, never giving it a thought about what would happen if disaster struck. The 500-employee operation began in 1903, and would move to the current location in Jenkintown not long after the conclusion of WW1 in 1920.

The first consideration is the soil and the air. Not long after the fire started, local officials instituted a voluntary evacuation of the immediate neighborhood, combined with a shelter-in-place order for one mile around the facility. Area residents were encouraged to call 911 if debris was in their yards instead of trying to remove it.

Water safety also becomes a major concern. The EPA came to sight and continues to test the water safety levels. This week, cyanide was found in the Tookany Creek right behind the SPS facility, although not in a location that provides drinking water. The Tookany Creek runs down to the Tookany/Tacony Frankford Watershed, covering nearly 33 miles.

Then we have the economics. SPS employs 574 people and is the seventh-largest employer in Abington Township. The closure of the manufacturing facility that operated on three shifts is catastrophic to the local economy — even without knowing when or if SPS will rebuild in the same location.

The full extent of this disaster on Abington and the surrounding community is simply not yet known. We have to allow the array of state experts who have descended on Abington to do their jobs and to provide guidance. After a community meeting on Wednesday night in Jenkintown, officials reassured the public that spokespeople from the hazmat team would be made available to answer any questions.

For a community whose documented disasters date back to an occupation by a foreign British Army for a few days in 1777, and whose history has been a story of patient perseverance:  we will wait. It’s all that we can do.

Michael Thomas Leibrandt lives and works in Abington Township, Pennsylvania