I can't believe it's been a year now since our lives changed. A year ago today, Kaili and I got a phone call from her sister telling us that our home was on fire. Everything is still so vivid and while I haven't really shared much about it since that day, I feel that a year later maybe it would be good to share in case you're interested.
At the time we received the call we were at my mother-in-law and father-in-law's house. I believe I was watching a webcam to view the cruise port in Port Everglades where my brother and sister-in-law were boarding Oasis of the Seas for their first cruise.
Kaili got the call and we panicked/froze in place. Then after a few seconds we rushed out the door and got in the car to head up to the house. About a minute later it smacked me in the face...everything is going to be gone and it probably already is. That's because we lived in a 27 foot camper and while they're a great option for cozy and frugal living, they are basically huge tinder boxes that go up in flames in a hurry. I'll never know exactly what caused the fire, though I have my suspicions and I'll never know where the flame started and how long it took to really go up, or whether I might have been able to put it out with our small fire extinguisher or not, but I'll forever be grateful that I wasn't inside when it happened because who knows how that might have played out. Maybe I would have been in the shower and not known until it was too late or maybe I'd have been asleep in the bed and been blocked from getting out. And I'm glad that Kaili hadn't gone up to the camper right after church like she had been planning.
The decision to live in a camper was one that took some time and wasn't arrived at lightly. I was always fascinated with the Tiny House movement but I'm not handy enough to build my own and the ones that are professionally built seem to be pretty expensive. After we went to the Tulsa boat and RV show we came away thinking that a camper could be a viable option. The appeal was that we could own it, it would cost much less than rent if we put it on someone's property, and with it being small it would force us to carefully consider each and every item we allowed into our lives and in doing so, keep us from buying stuff all the time.
After looking at all that Craigslist had to offer we found one we loved, took out $6,500 cash, and drove 2 hours to go pick it up. It would be our first home once we got married on May 23rd, 2015.
It wasn't perfect by any stretch. There was some wood that was water damaged, mice found their way in somehow and made us appreciate sticky traps after a few nights of terror that was exponentially greater than the size of the source, and it was either really hot in the summer or cold in the winter, but I can't tell you how much we loved our little "Homper" (Home/Camper).
We retrofitted the back quarter of it to be a pretty nice little closet, upgraded the shower head from one that was basically a trickle to one that had pressure and actually made it enjoyable, and we learned how to cook nice little meals in our micro-sized kitchen/living room. It was truly home for us, our own little space, and while we saw so many of our peers buying nice looking modern brick homes, we felt like it was enough for us.
Quite honestly, camper living was in large part a reaction to student debt for us. We had a great undergrad experience but had to take on a lot of debt to have that experience. Rather than complain, we felt like we could do something radically different to try to swing the pendulum back in the right direction. We felt like it was a good plan.
Our plans went out of the window on December 18th, 2016. I guess up in flames would make more sense though right? (*Please Laugh*)
As soon as we got to the highway we looked north and saw a huge billow of black smoke filling the sky. I knew there would likely be nothing left by the time we got there. When we arrived at the property where Kaili's grandparents also lived, there was a police officer on the scene to keep everyone a safe distance away until the firefighters arrived to take over and there was so much smoke all around. We could see the camper over the top of the wooden fence that surrounded the property and it was already burned halfway down the aluminum walls. There was no saving anything, no playing out the scenario we all talk about of "what's the one thing you would grab to take with you if your house was on fire."
In a matter of minutes the flames reached the roof of the house and now saving it was the firefighters priority. Unfortunately it was one of the coldest days of the winter and the ground was frozen so the hydrants didn't work. The trucks had some water in their reservoir but not enough to aggressively attack the flames. They had to wait for tankards of water to arrive to a rural location. It soon became apparent that the house was at major risk of being a total loss. We walked over to a car on the street that belonged to a neighbor and we talked to Kaili's grandmother who told us that their cat was still in the house. Kaili wanted to run to the back door to open it and let him out but I was concerned about the gas tank exploding or her being injured and I wasn't feeling particularly heroic in that moment so I just kept her from being. The risk wasn't worth it. I had just lost every item I owned except for what was on me and in my car, I wasn't willing to lose the most important person in my life for the cat.
This all happened in a matter of moments but feels like an eternity when I'm recalling it. When fighting a fire the brave firefighters aren't dealing in hours, they're dealing in seconds and minutes, and despite many of them being volunteers for rural departments, meaning many of them had been called into action while having Sunday lunch with their families after church, they were doing everything in their power to contain the fire and get it under control.
Unfortunately the house was a total loss. The flames spread along the ceiling and they couldn't get enough water to it.
I won't go on and on about the minutia of the fire much longer because I want to cover what happened after, but I will say that there are a few things we experienced that maybe are interesting to you because you would never know it without it happening to you.
The first is that the firefighters are predictably incredible. As I said, these were mainly volunteers from rural departments, on an incredibly cold day. They are putting themselves at risk to save the house. The whole time I was witnessing the fire, we kept reminding ourselves "we've just lost everything but it's just stuff and we still have each other," yet these men and women were risking themselves when the house just contained stuff. After the flames were finally out they would go in repeatedly to retrieve whatever items they could manage and bring them out to the garage. They don't know what's important to you but in their minds they figure maybe they'll come out with an item or two that will bring you some comfort (since we lived in the camper we didn't get any comfort items unfortunately. In the days that would follow we would find things that were ruined but at least recognizable).
The second is that Red Cross is important. I know that we always think of them in times of crisis but until I experienced it firsthand I didn't understand. We were met by a volunteer with the local Red Cross who had us fill out a report and explained how we might go about handling the rebuilding of our lives in the days that would follow. They gave us care kits with some basic toiletries and a toothbrush (the worst toothbrush you'd ever know could exist but they have to make their budget stretch), a stuffed teddy bear, and a white fleece blanket with the Red Cross logo all over it (scratchy and more like something you would wrap furniture in when moving than a soft blanket you would want, but it brought us warmth in that moment and we were so grateful for it), and finally a Visa gift card that was loaded with a few hundred dollars for the purpose of either getting a hotel for a couple nights or buying some things like clothing.
The third thing is that the news crews are amazing at responding. There were tripods with cameras and news reporters on location before the flames were even out. I'll be honest, I know it's their job, but for every bit of good that the firefighters and Red Cross did, seeing the news crews there felt really harmful. While your life is falling apart, it stings to know that there might be people sitting at home watching it on their TV like it's basically an action movie.
So what followed?
We moved into my mother-in-law and father-in-law's house, sleeping in Kaili's old bedroom on her full size bed. We shared a bathroom with her grandparents who moved into the guest room. It was very close quarters, and we didn't know how long it would be like that. It ended up being almost a year.
There were a lot of tears shed for the first week, but personally the direct experience of the event ran its course for me pretty quickly. The first day was just shock and a feeling of powerlessness. The second day was coming back to reality and trying to accept that it really happened. The third day I went up to the property and we tried to dig in the debris to find anything salvageable (no real luck) and I found my favorite old t-shirt, burned up and soaking wet. I held it up and had Kaili take a picture of me as I smiled wide and laughed. I decided that since I couldn't take back what happened, I wasn't going to let it steal all my joy (even if it took quite a bit of it).
The next day I went back to work. I was ready and needed to have some sense of normalcy if I could. I can't begin to tell you how incredibly fortunate I am to work where I do. The people I work with are second to none. Shortly after arriving at the scene that day, I called my boss Aaron and fought back tears so I could ask him if it was okay if I wasn't at work the next morning because my house was on fire. He asked what we needed. I told him I didn't know, but that I didn't have any clothes for work now. He lives probably 45 minutes away and yet in what seemed like less than an hour he and his wife Ashley had gone to Kohl's, purchased a gift card with what I considered to be a way too generous amount of money on it, and brought it to us there in the shadows of the smoke. It allowed Kaili and I to buy a good number of nice items to wear (shoutout Kohl's clearance racks!) and gave us a little spark as we started to figure out what to do.
My first day at work started out with tears. The owner of the company (I won't mention his name because I doubt he would want credit for anything) told me that he heard that Kaili needed a laptop to finish her studies at nursing school so he wanted to give me one of his MacBook Air laptops (I wrapped it and gave it to her for Christmas a few days later) and he handed me a personal check that made a huge difference for us and her grandparents. I also saw a poster in a couple places around the building with a GoFundMe link that Aaron had set up. Many of you who are reading this gave and I didn't have the chance to properly thank you all. I will tell you that the amount of money that came in was so helpful in getting us all back on our feet but it was the number of people who participated in helping us that was most impactful. It would have been so easy to feel alone in the world dealing with this event but you all wouldn't let that happen and it made a huge difference.
We're a year removed from what felt like the end of our world. Kaili became a registered nurse and has been working at Hillcrest Hospital and we moved into a rental house nearby about a month ago and are getting our lives a little more figured out and rebuilt. We still don't have a whole bunch of stuff, but we have everything we need and most importantly, we still have each other to walk through this crazy journey with. The house was leveled and cleared away along with the camper, and only the garage remains.
I still miss our little tiny home, and I regret that we never really took pictures of it, but I'll always think back on our time living there with fondness. A year ago I didn't know if we would be okay, but we made it through one year and I'm glad for life.
