This Sucks Beyond Words
 

I got home late from school tonight, having had to stay late for parent conferences, and when I got to the house, my dad and brother were there. Their house had burned to the ground during the day, and they had no place to go. They lost everything but the clothes off their backs and their cars. I am just still in shock.

pitbulllady

Wow, sorry about that. :(

What caused the fire?

That's horrible! I'll be praying for you guys!

Oh no! :'( I am so, soooo sorry to hear of that PBL. I'm very thankful your father and brother are ok, though. Now here's to a smooth transition to starting over. I hope things will get better soon.

...Is that the house you just posted pictures of?? :wiltshock:

I am so, so sorry. :sadbendy: We're all here for you if you and yours need support!

Wow, so very sorry to hear about the tragedy in your family and I hope everything works out in the end.

Wow. I am so sorry. I echo everybody else's statements in saying that we are here for you, and you and your family will be in my thoughts and prayers. Hopefully everything will be alright.

A space heater in my brother's bedroom. I don't know-maybe he left something flammable too close to it, or it shorted out or overheated, but by the time my dad discovered the fire, it was out of control. His Pug barking alerted him that something was wrong, and he did manage to get the dog out. He loves that little dog; I know that losing him would have been too much. My brother was coming home from work and saw the smoke. It's been so cold, the garden hose was frozen solid, and it took the fire department 40 minutes to get there, so it was too late by the time they did.

And, no, it's not the house I posted a picture of. No one lives in that house; it's right next door to where I live, although I guess I'm gonna have to move into my old trailer now. My dad owns this house, where I stay, and that old house in the picture. He didn't have insurance on the one he lived in, since my aunt left it to my brother, my sister and I. We never transferred it to my father's name, and in SC, if a house is in more than one name, you cannot get homeowner's insurance on it.

pitbulllady

Oh, man, this really does suck beyond words, and in so many ways. I'm really sorry; I hope everything will work out okay. :( :macwor:

That's horrible news, pbl. I'm glad that they weren't physically affected by it, but it's still a shame that they've lost everything else. I'll be thinking about them.

Yes, that does indeed suck beyond words, and I am very sorry to hear it. I'm glad that your family themselves were all able to get out alive, including the pug dog, and I can only hope that they'll be able to successfully rebuild their lives from scratch. In the meantime, you know that support will always lurk within these pages.

That's really awful PBL and I'm very sorry. that's a very cruel twist about the insurance thing. Is state aid or a social security emergency loan available? If not can you get help from Trade Unions/ Churches etc? Will you get a report from the fire department on what probably caused the fire? Do you have a lawyer? Obviously I don't want any of those questions answering but there the sort of things I'd be asking. Of course you have the trauma and the practical implications of this disaster to deal with but if anyone's able overcome disaster I'm sure it's you. Good luck.

Sorry to hear that, PBL. I'm glad that you and your family are safe, and I hope that things works out for the better.

Again, sorry to hear this tragic news. :(

We don't have trade unions in SC, either, not in this area. My father was retired from Sonoco Products, a paper company, but they weren't unionized. I have heard that several of our church members are going to bring over some clothes and stuff later today. We know what caused the fire already, a space heater in my brother's room. He kept his room really cluttered with old magazines and stuff, and why he even had a space heater on in there when the house had modern central heat and air is beyond me. My brother works late at night through the early morning cleaning up a bar and grill about a half-hour away, and was not home at the time. My dad was in the kitchen getting himself a cup of coffee, when the dog starting barking down the hallway. When my dad went to investigate, he saw the dog barking at my brother's closed bedroom door, and when he opened it to see what the dog was barking out, flames rushed out, singing his hair and eyebrows. He tried to put it out with a fire extinguisher, but the fire was so hot and intense that he could not stand to be close enough to it, so he grabbed the dog and ran outside, threw the dog in his truck, and tried to use a garden hose. It was frozen solid due to our extremely cold nights. He called the fire dept. on his cell phone, but they took over a half-hour to respond, and of course by then it was too late. He had to sit outside in his truck and watch his house burn to the ground. He went back today and tried to salvage some stuff. Most of the house is completely gone, but the room with the computers wasn't badly damaged, and he's going to try to salvage at least one computer. He also managed to find a few of his old records that were unharmed, along with some computer software, including a brand-new disc of Microsoft Office. All of the clothes, food, and other personal stuff was gone. I rode by there today, and it's sickening to see a house that I spent several years of my life in gone-all the photographs, everything.
The difficult part for me is that I'm a very independent person. I've lived on my own since my early twenties, and now, I'm having to adjust to having people living under the same roof with me again, and the loss of my privacy. My brother has Asberger's Syndrome, and while I am in no way putting down anyone who has this, it DOES make him difficult to live with. He cannot change how he is. He came in and took over my new computer, for instance, telling me I had to unplug this or that of MY stuff, so he could recharge his laptop, then promptly took over my bedroom and bed. It doesn't bother him in the least. There's only one television, and my dad is a tv nut. I'm probably not going to get to watch tv again for several months, unless by chance we happen to want to watch the same thing. I KNOW he's not going to want to watch the final episodes of Foster's. It's almost like the reverse of what you often hear, of adult children coming back home to live with their parents when things don't work out in the real world, only it's the parent coming to live with the now-adult child. It's going to really take a lot of getting used to. I had to move my cats out, and that meant taking two of them and letting them loose on my aunt's property, even though they'd never been outside. She can't let them in because her dog would kill them, and I had no place to put them on such short notice. I don't know what I'm going to do with my snakes and tarantulas, since I was using the den as the spider and snake room, but now it's going to have to be a den for people all over again. Only one eye on the stove top works, which didn't bother me, but now it's a problem with three people living there. We're gonna have to throw out all of my grandparents' stuff, which again, never was in my way, but now it is. There's just really so much to do that it's overwhelming.

pitbulllady

That sounds so horrible, again I'm so sorry. :bloosad: Hopefully the worst has past and it'll all be downhill from here for you. This too shall pass.

That's horrible PBL D= Good luck on rebuilding after that!

My dad's not going to rebuild. The house is a total loss-nothing to rebuild left. I'm just going to have to adjust to living with other people after almost 25 years.

pitbulllady

I meant more like the worldly possessions kind of thing, not that that really matters as long as everyone is ok.

Just an update on the house situation; we decided to turn the old living room in my grandparents'/my house into my new bedroom, and give my current bedroom to my brother. The living room is the largest room in the house, and my father figured it would have enough room for all my snakes and spiders, as well as me. He's going to stay in my grandfather's old room. He's talking about getting a wireless ethernet router, or getting cable, which comes with Roadrunner High-Speed wireless, so we don't have to fuss over who gets to be online using my one ethernet hook-up, especially once he gets himself a new computer. We looked at some computers today in town, along with some televisions(I only have a little 13-inch tv). Slowly but surely, the living arrangements are coming together.

On a side note, a friend of ours went through the wreckage today, trying to salvage more stuff. For some odd reason, the floor what was the dining room, which my father had converted into a geek's paradise of computers and recording equipment, did not collapse. My father is the treasurer for our church, and had all of the church's financial records, from 1997 to the present, on a computer in that room. Just a couple of days before the fire, my brother had bought him a 16-gig jump drive, and he'd downloaded all the church financial records to it. Our friend found that jump drive, still stuck in USB port of what used to be a computer, and pulled it out. He also found a Quicken 2000 CD that had not melted, along with a brand-new, not-yet-downloaded CD of Microsoft Office, which my new computer lacked. The church records had to be opened and updated using Quicken, which my computer also lacked. Both CD's were in perfect shape, although the boxes they were in had nearly fallen apart, mostly due to the water sprayed on them by the fire dept. The plastic casing of the jump drive was warped and twisted like a pretzel from the heat, but the USB end was still intact. My father was sure it wouldn't be any good at all, but when I stuck it in the USB port on my new computer, it WORKED! All of the records were intact! The CD of both Quicken and Office also worked, and I was able to download both just fine! Our friend also found some photos from the wall that had survived because they were behind glass, and two heirloom Bibles that were wet, but otherwise intact, and he discovered that the China cabinet, with a lot of fine China that my mother had inherited(she passed away in 1989)was still unharmed, so they're going to try to get the dishes and things out of it and bring it to the house where we're all living now. If you were to see what's left of this once-large-and-beautiful old house(it was over 100 years old) from the highway, you wouldn't think anything could possibly be salvaged from it.

pitbulllady

Sounds like the blow is starting to soften, that's a relief. And although small, the salvaged computer items, pictures and china sound like blessings to me. It's nice to see things are starting to look up. :)