Fire - Day 1

This week has been spent going through what is left of one's belongings after a house fire. My son's rental house burned last weekend. The first flurry of activity was to try to determine how much damage when both he and his wife were out of town.
Thomas was in Raleigh, North Carolina on a work assignment. Stephanie was house sitting for her parents while they were on a cruise.

My sister-in-law was first of the family on the scene. But it is hard to visualize fire damage, when you haven't had experience. I called someone we had known from church almost 20 years ago. I knew he was a fireman, and I wanted to know what to expect. He was helpful. I needed to know things like - how would we know whether we would be able to go into the house? Martha was able to go into the house that night and gave us some information. It appeared that Stephanie's wedding dress had not burned, although the bag was covered in soot. We did not know where the wedding photos were, but I was pretty sure that the negatives still existed, as well as both sets of parents had copies. The reports of the damage were conflicting. One of Stephanie's work friends drove by and reported that the house was totally gutted. Fortunately Martha could tell us that while everything was covered in soot, the greatest damage was confined into two rooms and a bathroom.

While we tried to get someone to board up the house that night, it was late, the price quote seemed high. We just had to trust God that no one would loot the house before we could get there Monday.