We had a House Fire

Where to even start…

I thought the biggest stressor this summer would be finding a full time nurse for Brayden.

I thought I would be coming home from our Hilton Head vacation to post pictures of all of our fun (incredibly hot/sweaty fun at the beach).  Instead we came home to find a house fire.

We had a house fire.

 

Saturday evening, we pulled into our driveway.  Car full of tired people.  We hopped out of car and tried to open the garage doors, nothing would open but we could see power was still on in part of the house.  Jeremy and I went in through the front door.  We walked in and knew something was terribly wrong.  But it didn’t register at first.  The house was covered in a gray haze.  Jeremy wandered one direction and I in another.  We wandered back to each other and Jeremy said, “We have a fire.”  We just couldn’t process what was happening.

The fire department was called.

There was a fire in the basement.  The fire seemed to be caused by the massive storms and lightening that rolled through our area last Tuesday night.  The fire burned in the basement.  That eventually fried lots of electrical wires and water pipes.  The busted water pipes may have helped put of the fire.  It turned in to a low smoldering fire that filled the house with smoke and soot.  We found the house fire on Saturday, we do not know how longed it actually burned.  We are not even sure the smoke detectors went off.  The inside of the house is absolutely covered in soot and reeks of smoke. 

Our house is not livable.  We do not have our house for a while.

The entire finished basement is lost due to the fire, smoke and soot damage.  The main floor is damaged a little less, some stuff will be lost.  And the top floor is damaged by the smoke and soot, but most of the stuff should be fine.  Contents on the main and top floor have all been hauled away for special fire/smoke cleaning, seeing what can be done with it all.  A lot of the items will still have to be replaced.

That is just stuff.  Things can be replaced. The house is still standing.  All of our things have been removed.  Walls, ceilings, etc. will be torn down.

We are looking for a place to stay while the house is being repaired.  Finding housing is proving quite difficult to accommodate a space for Brayden, a full bathroom on the main floor that we could use for 3 months then on a month to month basis.

The good things:

• We were not home.  Especially since it seems the smoke detectors did not go off.  Brayden’s room is on the main floor and the smoke would have hit him first, while the rest of us are upstairs.
• We have suitcases of clothes and the basics from our vacation.
• We have Brayden’s primary medical equipment with us from vacation.

This will be a summer we will never forget.  More details to come later.  For now just pray that we can handle this stress on top of our already stressful life in progress...