On March 13th 2013 barely a month after my mother passed away, my wife woke me up in a panic. She said, 'The entry room wall is glowing, I think the chimney is on fire!' You can just tell sometimes when something is serious, or an over reaction. This was one of those serious moments where you go from fully asleep to fully alert in only a couple of seconds. I ran down the hall way and in the dim light of the entry room I could tell for certain the wall was glowing red and most likely it WAS the chimney. I had dealt with a flu fire once as a kid and the first thing we needed to do was put it out. I grabbed two buckets and started filling them. I called for my oldest son who was down stairs in the basement waking his younger brother. They both emerged from the stairs and I told my oldest son I could not get on the roof, but we needed to pour the water down the chimney and then cap it with a steel lid to choke it out.
My wife had gathered the girls, called 911 and the fire department was supposed to be on the way, but we couldn't wait. Derek climbed up on the roof with a bucket of water and dumped it down the chimney. I gave him another bucket, and he poured it down as well. I tossed up a fire extinguisher and he emptied it down the chimney. I couldn't see him but I could hear him coughing some. I asked him how he was and he said 'fine.' I went in and checked the wall. The paint was blistered and flaking off. The wall was still red. My first thought was that it's not on fire, it just needs time to cool, but what if it wasn't. I ran outside and around the house. I could see a faint glow of light through the attic vent on the gable. It only took a couple of seconds and I saw a flame jump out. I started screaming at Derek to get off the roof. He couldn't hear me on the roof and kept coughing over the smoke. As loud as I could I screamed 'GET OFF THE ROOF NOW! The attic is catching fire! Jump if you have to!' He ran to the south end of the house and jumped down on the deck. I ran back inside, told my wife I loved her, everything on the north end of the house was going to be gone, but we had to get out now. So in the most orderly fashion we could, we paraded out of the house in nothing more than our night clothes and underwear. We grouped up in the backyard, and tried to come up with a plan to save the house. It was cold, below freezing so the water hose was of no use since it would be full of ice. Try as we might there was nothing we could do.
I asked both boys to go around front and back the cars away from the house so the fire department would have more room. I shut the main power off at the meter and closed the propane valve. Then I realized if I could get my computer out of the house we would have SOMETHING left. A few digital photos, and most of our financial information. There were no usable entrances to the south end of the house and the north end was on fire. I would have to fit through a narrow window about twelve inches wide. I knocked the glass out and somehow managed to get my thirty eight inch wide shoulders through that narrow opening. I stood up and went to the bedroom door. It was already hot in there, and full of smoke. I went the the office grabbed the desktop and ripped it from the wall, taking the monitor, power cables and keyboard with me. By the time I got back to my entry window the only thing I had was the desktop machine. The rest of the cables had hung on things down the hallway and were stripped off. All I really wanted was the drives out of the machine. I tossed the computer out on the deck and somehow made it back through that narrow window.
When I met back up with my wife and daughters in the backyard, the entire northern half of the house was fully in flames. I asked where the boys were, since it really shouldn't have taken that long to move the vehicles back. We moved around the front of the house to make sure both boys were ok. They had been watching from the driveway. I called work to leave a voice mail that I wouldn't be in that morning. I then called my brother to tell him the house was on fire. We got in my wifes van to warm up. It had started to snow, and as bad as we wanted to do something there wasn't anything we could do to stop it. In the back of or minds we knew it was all going to be gone soon but we were still hoping the fire department would save at least something.
Fire trucks showed up along with several sheriff deputies. They started spraying water anywhere they could. Even their best efforts just weren't going to stop it. By the time they had cooled it down enough that the water did some good, it was gone. The house I grew up in, the house we were married at, the house my kids grew up in, the house my dad and brothers built, was gone. All we could do was stand there in shock and wonder what do we do now? The neighbors came with some clothes to wear, some shoes for the girls, and some pants for me. Others showed up that I didn't even know offering help. There's just not much you can tell them. Everything you ever had is all gone.
Life as we knew it in that house was over, forever.
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