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| LifeFriday, September 14, 2007 3:00 PM CDT |
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After the Fire: Burned out
Fire leaves residents picking up the pieces
The ensuing 5 1/2 months were a time of cleanup and reconstruction, of dealing with insurance adjusters and contractors and living a life disrupted. Today through Sunday, I will try to tell that story. I hesitated to write about my experience because I know others have experienced far worse. One of my neighbors, for example, lost most of what she owned. In the end, however, I decided to tell my story in the hope that the lessons I learned will help someone else. NORMAL -- As I pulled into my driveway a little after midnight on March 25, I saw two votive candles burning in the living room window of my neighbor's condominium. All the lights were off, and I remember hoping the young couple renting Unit C would remember to put those out before they went to bed. After all, we didn't want to have a fire. I had no way of knowing the flames that were about to sweep through that condo, across the back of the building, through my father's bedroom window and into my attic had already kindled in Unit C's kitchen. Tired from a long day at work -- I'm the night city editor at the Pantagraph -- I was looking forward to eating a bad fast-food dinner, watching some television and going to bed. I was home for no more than 10 minutes when I heard a thumping noise coming from downstairs. I ignored it, thinking it was someone knocking on the front door of Unit C. But the pounding became more urgent, so I went to check it out. As I went down the stairs, I started smelling smoke, so I knew something was wrong. I opened the front door and saw Shawna Anderson standing in the yard and her boyfriend, Tim Gaston, on my porch. Both of the Unit C residents were dressed for bed. "The building's on fire! You have to get out!" Gaston shouted. As I turned to go upstairs to wake my father, John Miller, I saw smoke seeping through the carpeting on the upper landing of the stairway. I ran into my father's room at the head of the stairs and shook him awake. I was a little panicky, but I mostly thought this was a minor inconvenience, more like a fire drill. As Dad woke up, I crossed the hall to grab my shoes, wallet and keys from my bedroom, but couldn't find my cell phone. I grabbed Dad's wallet and keys from his dresser and hurried him down the stairs. By that time the smoke was much thicker. As we hit the bottom of the stairs, I turned back and saw a solid wall of orange outside the kitchen window on the back of the condo. That's when I knew the fire was worse than I had thought. I grabbed my jacket and we headed out the front door. Help arrives Normal police Sgt. Jeffery Longfellow and two other officers arrived on the scene at 1502 Hancock Drive at 12:41 a.m., about the time Dad and I came out Unit D's front door. Longfellow saw flames burning up the back of the building and into the roof, and ordered us to cross the driveway and stand on the concrete porch of a nearby apartment building. Fire truck sirens were in the distance. The police officers were pounding on the doors of units A and B and yelling to the residents to get out as windows from Unit C shattered from the heat, sending more smoke outside. Delois Gibson, who was alone in Unit A, had been asleep when she heard Anderson and Gaston pound on her door. "The smoke detector started going off as I was coming down the stairs," Gibson later said as we watched the fire scene. Thirteen firefighters on five fire trucks rolled up at 12:43 a.m. No one had answered the door of Unit B, which is in the elbow of the L-shaped, four-unit building, so firefighters kicked in the front door and broke the kitchen window in the back. It turned out the resident, Ryan Oltman, had slipped out the side patio door in the commotion. His mother, Judy, was not home when the fire started. "I was on the computer when I smelled smoke," said Ryan Oltman, then a senior accounting major at Illinois State University. "I walked out the patio door and saw flames shooting out (the back of Unit C). The glass was popping and breaking." In the end, no one was hurt. Watching and waiting The six building residents home that night gathered at the apartment building across the driveway from my condo, watching as firefighters knocked down the flames in the back of the building from the outside. The firefighters then went through the front door of Unit C with another hose. Anderson and Gaston huddled on the concrete step. She was crying; he was comforting her. Gaston didn't even have time to grab a shirt, so I lent him my jacket because the temperature was in the mid-50s. "I have no idea what we are going to do," Anderson said later. "We have nothing." Anderson's mother, who lives a few buildings away, came over to take care of them. I borrowed someone's cell phone and called two people: my friend Kathy Bowen and my boss, Managing Editor Julie Gerke. I told Julie we needed a photographer right away. People really do come through in an emergency. Bowen and Gerke, blankets in tow, arrived within minutes, and three Red Cross volunteers soon followed. I walked to the back of the building and watched the flames burn along the outside wall of my kitchen and dining room. The vinyl siding bubbled, dripped and fell away, and flames burned through Dad's bedroom window and shattered the outer pane of the window of the corner bedroom I use as an office. While I watched the fire with Bowen and Anderson, a neighbor offered a garbage bag full of clothes to Anderson. Another asked if anyone wanted her to pray with them. The fire was out within 20 minutes or so, and a fire crew went through Unit C to see if the fire had spread. They also pulled apart sections of roof and wall to make sure the fire was out. Additional crews checked the other units again for occupants. When the firefighters were sure it was safe, they went into the condos with us a little after 2 a.m. to gather up what we needed to stay elsewhere. Unit C was burned out and off-limits. It was eerie, rummaging in the basement for suitcases as smoke and dust swirled in the flashlight beam. Tired and a little dazed, we had to figure out what clothes, medicines and toiletries to take. Naturally, everything we packed smelled of smoke. Firefighters were on the scene until 2:33 a.m. They later had to come back to douse hotspots in the back wall and roof. The Red Cross volunteers had come armed with comfort items, such as blankets and bottled water, but also had forms and vouchers for food, clothing and hotel stays. They gave Anderson a $90 voucher for food and a $130 voucher for clothing. They gave us vouchers for a night at a hotel. "They were like a security blanket in a time of trauma," Gibson later said of the volunteers. "I can't thank them enough." Cause still unclear More than five months later, it's still not clear how the fire started. Normal fire Capt. Ed Hershberger told police "the stove or something lying on the stove caused the fire," but Anderson said she doesn't know what happened. Firefighters found a pot on the back right burner that had contained cooking oil, and the burner was in the "on" position. Insurance investigators in their report noted the same finding about the stove, but that Anderson said she hadn't used the stove that day. They said the damage was too extensive to determine an exact cause; they listed it as undetermined. Anderson told firefighters and a Pantagraph reporter that she and Gaston had arrived home at 11:30 p.m. and cleaned the kitchen. They then fell asleep on the sofa. She awoke to find smoke in the condo, the fire report said. Anderson said she called 911, then she and Gaston pounded on doors to alert the rest of us. She told me she was especially worried about Dad because she knew he was elderly and had trouble hearing. I credited them then with saving us. I still don't know what would have happened if I hadn't been home to hear them. At some point, the fire burned through the window a foot from the head of Dad's bed. Without their extra warning, he might still have been asleep when that happened. Fire safety tipsGeneral • Install a smoke alarm outside each sleeping area and on each additional level of your home. If people sleep with doors closed, install smoke alarms inside sleeping areas, too. • Test them regularly, dust them monthly, replace batteries annually and replace the device every 10 years. • Consider having one or more working fire extinguishers in your home and/or installing an automatic fire sprinkler system. Learn to use the extinguisher; misusing one on a grease fire, for example, can splatter burning grease onto other surfaces. • Determine at least two ways to escape from every room of your home. • Consider escape ladders for sleeping areas on the second or third floor. • Select a location outside your home where everyone would meet after escaping. • Practice your escape plan at least twice a year. • Once you are out, stay out! Call the fire department from a neighbor's home. • If you see smoke or fire in your first escape route, use your second way out. If you must exit through smoke, crawl low under the smoke to your exit. • If you are escaping through a closed door, feel the door before opening it. If it is warm, use your second way out. • If smoke, heat or flames block your exit routes, stay in the room with the door closed. Signal for help using a bright-colored cloth at the window. If there is a telephone in the room, call the fire department and tell them where you are. Cooking • If a pan catches fire, put a lid on it and turn off the burner. Never pour water on a grease fire; it will spread. • Keep oven or microwave door closed if fire starts. • Wear close-fitting sleeves when cooking. • Turn pot handles toward center of stove so they aren't knocked off. • Heat oil slowly. It can flash. • Teach children safe cooking. • Unplug toaster ovens after use. Heat sources • Keep combustibles away from space heaters or furnace outlets. • Clean chimney often if you use it often. Don't put a lot of paper in the fireplace to start a fire. Sparks can catch the chimney or roof. • Have your furnace and other heating sources checked regularly. • Use candles carefully. Keep away from combustible items. Trim wicks. Don't let them burn more than four hours or burn to the bottom of the container. Blow out candles before going to bed or leaving the room. • Many candles have been recalled. To find out which, go to the Consumer Product Safety Commission Web site (http://cpsc.gov). SOURCES: National Fire Protection Association, State Farm Insurance Cos., American Red Cross, McClatchy Newspapers Factoids• In the United States, a home fire is reported every 79 seconds, and someone dies from a home fire every 135 minutes, according to American Red Cross data. In a typical year, 20,000 people are injured in home fires. • Fire has a sense of humor. A couple of days after the fire, Nick Vukson, owner of Unit C, a rental, called me over to the charred refrigerator sitting in our parking lot. The interior was twisted metal and plastic and swollen insulation that looked like lava rock. Inside were burned lumps that had been food containers. He pulled out a toasted carton of eggs, and he showed me the eggs themselves looked like they had been blowtorched. He then dropped one on the ground. It broke open, revealing a perfectly raw and fresh-looking white and yolk. We threw the eggs away to make sure no one would use them to vandalize the worksite. Two days later, someone egged my newly installed office window -- with brand-new, white eggs. E-mail this story | Print this story | Search archives | RSS Show comments |  Hide comments | Hide comments on all stories |
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