"Our Home" the day after

House pre-fire

House two years before the fire

On an extremely typical hot  August afternoon in 2006, my home and everything inside of it was incinerated by an out of control wildfire.  The fire, which originated about a mile from my home, was determined to be intentionally set by someone  whose sickness compelled them to act in such a destructive way.  While most of my neighbors in our small rural area suffered some sort of damage to their outlying property, my home was the only one to be completely destroyed along with our family dogs, small farm animals, our boat, our barn, my son’s car and every bit of landscaping that we had lovingly planted, tended to, and labored over for eighteen years.  Because the fire was ignited in deep foothill sagebrush, it spread extremely fast and was pushed eastward by late afternoon winds which unfortunately funneled huge dense flames up the canyon toward my house like an enormous chiminey.  There was nothing that could be done despite the efforts of the forestry department which consisted of one tank truck and three lone firemen.  Thanks to my middle son Matt, who made it to my house in record time from his own home, and pulled me out of my burning house, I am here today to write about the whole experience  and share with any one who may be interested in how one goes about starting over.  My husband John and I had been married for thirty two years and just enrolled the last of our three sons into college.  We had built our home in 1988 and it had been a labor of love providing a home in the foothills for three very outdoorsy boys who took full advantage of a rural environment, had our eldest son’s wedding there, welcomed our first grandson there and had finally begun to start setting some money aside for our retirement.  But as everyone knows “life happens” and in thirty minutes time we had lost everything we had ever owned.  We had each other, the clothes on our backs and two cars that thankfully were elsewhere during the fire.  That was it!  The nightmare was just beginning.