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THROUGH THE FIRE PART TWO

6/20/2014

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My boyfriend Don and my two cats, Elsa and Kiara, spent what was left of the night of the fire in a budget motel room. Kiara was totally traumatized and hid under the bed.  Don eventually feel asleep. I could not.  I kept
mentally replaying the night and the day, wishing I could close my eyes and wake up and have it all be a very realistic nightmare.  

No one had been hurt and yes, the only thing lost were things, but my
house, my home was in total disarray and I no idea in the world how I was going to put it back to what it was.

Elsa stayed awake all night with me, purring on my chest, as if to reassure me everything was going to work out.  I just wanted to get started on getting everything back the way it was.

When morning finally arrived, we packed up the cats, still in a cardboard box since the cat carriers had been in the garage and took them to the vet for boarding. I had called my boss to let him know what had happened and now, calling my home answering machine, there were several messages from him and a co-worker, telling me to call work as soon as possible.

The co-worker, as fate would have it, had recently had a fire in her own home.  Have you met with your insurance company yet?”

 “No, we are heading over to the house. They are going to meet me there.”

“Don’t tell them anything. Don’t agree to anything and for God’s sake don’t sign anything!  I am sending over my public adjuster.  He will be there within the hour.”

 I had never heard of public adjusters.  I am going to guess most people haven’t unless they had a home disaster.  Simply put, public adjusters negotiate with your insurance company to make sure you get everything that your insurance policy will allow. They are not lawyers.  They simply know the ins
and outs of how the whole claim process works. They are not free. They take a percentage of the total claim at the end, but they tell you that they will get you more than you could get on your own.

 I wasn’t sure I needed one. I had insurance.  They would just fix everything and I would get back to my life as soon as possible, right?

 Besides, maybe some things were salvageable.  I had some cds in my truck that I thought may have survived.  Maybe my 15 year collection of Christmas ornaments was still there.

Turning down my street, we were met by approximately 30 people all standing in my yard.  I suddenly knew what being followed by paparazzi was like. We pulled up and they all stared at us, but no one approached us.

 My neighbor came out from next door and hustled  us into his living room. 

“They are all public adjusters,” he explained. “They have been waiting all morning.  Vultures, all of them! Why would you need them? Your insurance company will take care of you.”

I was more confused than ever. 

Looking at the garage, it was worse than anything I had remembered from the night before.  The truck was unrecognizable. Almost everything in the garage was unrecognizable.  We later found one
item, a shovel, the handle burned, but the metal part still intact. I kept it, just because it was the only thing left.

 We went into the house. The wall of the living room and the ceiling had huge holes where the firemen had used their axes to make sure there was no fire in the walls.  The entire house smelled terrible.

My insurance company finally arrived. I had found out the night before that the truck was not covered by the home insurance policy.  It was covered by the auto insurance policy.  I had two different insurance companies and I was about to have two different experiences.

The public adjuster my co-worker had recommended also arrived.  We spoke in hushed tones in the backyard while the insurance people gave us the evil eye.

“They are going to try to rush you into getting everything done quickly and they are only going to fix whatever they absolutely have to.  They are going to have you sign paperwork agreeing to things right now that you won’t be able to take back,” the public adjusters told me. “Do you really want to make decisions now?”

 With no sleep and feeling like I was in some kind of haze, no I did not want to sign anything.  I barely felt like I could put one foot in front of another.  But didn’t I want things put back together quickly?

The insurance company had sent over a woman, who spoke quietly to me and assured me that if I just signed some paperwork, they would get started cleaning things up. Everything would be fine.

 She almost had me. If she had been the only one there, I would have believed that they had my best interests in mind and that it did not make sense to hire someone to help me get what they were already going to give me.

 But then I heard the guy who had been assigned to actually work the claim.  He was standing in the living room, taking notes with his assistant. He was standing in front of the gaping hole between my living room and the garage, right under the gaping hole in the ceiling and he said the words that made my decision for me:

 “We can just patch this. No need for all new dry wall.”

 My house. My first house that I had spent years in. Painted, made the yard nice. Put up pictures, made a home, now had a gaping hole in the living room and the ceiling and they were going to patch it. Not replace it. Not make it like it had been. THEY WERE GOING TO PATCH IT.

It was decided.  I turned to the nice talking insurance lady and said, “I won’t be signing anything with you today. I am going to employ the services of a public adjuster.”

Next up.  My policy says what?????



 
 
 

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THROUGH THE FIRE PART ONE

6/8/2014

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It was eleven years ago, Memorial Day weekend, that I burned down my garage.  Eleven is an interesting anniversary to commemorate, but it makes sense to me.  I spent eleven months after the fire trying to put it all  back together.
  
Let me just say up front, I am not a pyromaniac, although I do like candles
and fire pits.  I was doing what I traditionally do on Memorial Day weekend, getting the yard ready for the summer.  One of the major parts is always doing some work on my deck, usually involving cleaning and staining.  That particular Memorial Day was hot and I finished up the staining about two o clock in the afternoon.  Unfortunately, while reaching to put the can of stain back on the shelf in the garage, it slipped and the remainder of the stain spilled all over the garage floor.
 
Unlike many people, I actually use my garage to park my truck in.  My first thought was that oil based paint and a spark from a vehicle could possibly ignite, so I spent the next twenty minutes making sure I got all the paint off the floor.  I used a whole roll of paper towels and promptly threw them into a wastebasket in the corner of the garage.  A wastebasket with a closed lid.  Having never taken the time to read the paint can, I missed the part about not putting paint covered rags in a closed container.
 
I spent the rest of the day going in and out of the garage doing laundry and finishing up my yard work.  Later in the afternoon, I pulled my truck back into the garage.  I had a moment of hesitation, but  I thought, “It should be fine.  I know I wiped up all the paint.”
  
After a long day of working outside, I showered, had a little dinner, a glass of wine and put on my pajamas, ready to go to bed.  Just as I was getting ready to settle in for the night, I heard some noise coming from the garage, which although attached to the house, (see the photo above) doesn’t have a direct entry into the house.
  
My first thought was, “Some douche bag has broken into my garage!”  I rushed out the front door, in my little baby doll PJs, ready to kick someone’s ass.
 
Instead, I was met with huge flames shooting through the garage door.
 
The first thought that popped into my head was, “Hmmm. Looks like I won’t be going to work tomorrow.”
 
I ran to the phone to call 911.  They were already aware since some of the neighbors had already called.  By now, several of them were outside, shouting at me to get out of the house.
 
I had always seen people on TV during the wildfires, fighting to save their houses with hoses, trying to get their belongings out, and I always thought, “That would be me.”
 
I realize now, that will never be me.  Fires are very hot. Sounds like a “DUH” but you really don’t realize how hot until you are standing in front of them.  I wasn’t going to be trying to get anything out of the
garage, even though all my band equipment and of course, my just recently paid off truck were in there.
 
Instead, I stood in front of the house, my two cats inside and waited helplessly with my neighbors, for what seemed like hours, for the fire department to come.
 
They actually arrived fairly quickly.  One of my neighbors offered to let me use their phone to call someone.  I went in and couldn’t remember a single number, including my boyfriend of over ten years at the time.
 
A close friend showed up, called by my house alarm company.  Standing in my neighbor’s kitchen, still trying to remember anyone’s phone number, I heard her voice saying to one of the firemen, “I just want to know if the person who lives there is alright!”  I ran out the front door, crying out her name like a crazy person, never so glad in my life to see her.
 
My boyfriend also arrived, also called by the alarm company.  By that point, they had the fire under control and asked if I needed something out.
  
“My cats, where are my cats?”
 
The fireman brought out Elsa first.  He was holding her facing me and the first thing she did, was look at me and let out a loud “MEOW,” as if to say,  “Bitch, you left me in there?”
 
The cat carriers, of course, were also in the garage. I had been terrified that if I took the cats out myself,  with no carriers, they were going to take off, frightened by all the mayhem and I wouldn’t find them. So I had bet on the firemen doing their job and they did it.
 
They told me they could not catch Kiara. They had seen her running through the house, but every time they got near her, she took off.  Did I want to come in and see if she would come out for me?
 
We found her in the bedroom, under the bed.  I reached under and managed to pull her out, holding her tightly to my chest.  She promptly peed all over a jacket I was wearing that one of my neighbors had given me to put over my pajamas.
 
With the two cats safely in my neighbors’ bathtub, with the door closed, I asked what had caused the fire, sure I had somehow left some paint on the floor that had been ignited by the truck.
 
“Oh no,” the fireman said, “You did a great job of cleaning up the paint. It was the paper towels that you wiped it up with.”
 
I burst into tears.  Yes, any oil based paint on rags or towels in a closed container, will combust.  What made it even worse, was the waste basket was right over where I kept the extra paint, so as soon as the flames started, it hit the paint cans and went crazy.
 
All rags and towels should be put in water, left out in the open and not put in a garage of you can help it.  This last Memorial Day weekend when I did even spray painting, anything with paint on it, went in a bucket with water in it, out in the driveway, not near a building.
 
It is funny when I tell people this story.  They either finish it for me,  saying, “It was the wastebasket” or they look at me in total disbelief and go, “HOURS later?  After you had been in the house for hours?  I
thought that was urban legend.”
 
I think it depends if you ever read the paint can.
 
Next up, putting it all back together………
  


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