Wednesday, April 07, 2010

The Fire


The Fire

One week ago our house burned down. It was traumatic. Thank goodness everyone is alive. No one got hurt. But we lost just about everything else. And the response of our communities of family and friends from all around the world was and is deeply generous, much appreciated, and unexpectedly overwhelming.
We got uplifting responses not only from all over the Northwest but from folks from Japan to Norway, Virginia to California, New York to South Carolina, Alaska to Vermont, Mexico to Canada, Jordan, Turkey, Spain, Germany, Italy, China, Kentucky, Florida, Connecticut, North Carolina. Texas. Tennessee. Illinois. The list goes on. From Christians to Muslims to Atheists to Jews, Buddhists, Hindus, and Pagans. Amazing. We were reminded not only how lucky to be alive but we’re all part of one giant family of humanity sharing one small, beautiful planet.
Saturday, March 20, 2010. It was 11:00 in the morning in Edmonds, Washington, a waterfront city north of Seattle noted for its small-town feel with lots of trees. Morgan, my oldest daughter, had recently turned 16, and we were hosting a post-birthday slumber party for about 12 of her friends. Her younger sisters, Kate, 11, and Talia, 7, were at their own sleepovers back in North Seattle. I left to drive down into Seattle to pick up Kate and Talia and bring them home while Kristina left to take our dog Jo to the vet. There were 8 teenage girls left in our home by then.
They’re great kids, these girls. We’re delighted Morgan had a great circle of fun, funny, artistic, and responsible friends. They were hanging out upstairs playing chess and preparing to cook breakfast. First they noticed a thin smoky haze and remarked how pretty the sunshine was. Then they realized it was smoke. Were pancakes burning on the stove? No, no fire cooking. There were no candles, no incense, no smoking, none of that. Thick, toxic smoke rolled out of the heating vents and roiled up the stairs from the basement, our first floor. The smoke was so thick they couldn’t even get out the door.
A few kids wanted to run down and rescue items: shoes/boots/clothes/cell phones/iPods/sleeping bags/coats/birthday presents….and Morgan took a stand. “No!” she shouted. “We need to get out of here now! This way!”
They ran out to the west thru sliding glass doors onto the deck one story up and raced to the shallow side where they scrambled over the railing and jumped into the bushes. Many were barefoot, in underwear, T-shirts, and pajamas, but all made it safely. No one was hurt. Morgan called 911 on Natalie’s cell phone, the only phone in the group. They alerted some of the neighbors, as the fire could’ve spread next door. There is thick rain forest vegetation around the neighborhood. Thank goodness it was not a hot dry August day with a breeze.
We had just moved to Edmonds from Seattle in December 2009. Kristina and I were in the process of short-selling our two homes after enduring the hardships of the Recession and developing new careers. We moved there for the peace and quiet and to hunker down and rebuild. It was a gorgeous house built as a model solar energy home back in the Carter Administration. The owner’s parents were architects who built it in conjunction with the Bonneville Power Administration and the Carter government. It was a 4,000 square foot 2-story home built into the side of a hill near the top of a large ravine. It faced west to the Salish Sea and the Olympic Mountains in a stunning view framed by green conifers untarnished by power lines and telephone wires. Every day we gazed upon sailboats, supertankers, Navy ships, barges, and more slicing thru the waters beneath the craggy, snowy peaks of the Olympics or under silver-grey clouds rolling in from the Pacific. Kristina would go outside on the deck almost daily to practice yoga while listening to the birds. This was a house built of glass and wood and shaped sort of like a giant teepee.
The entire house blazed up in less than a half hour, but took over 24 hours to put out the fire completely. The fire was a "killer fire," and many expressed certainty that if it happened at night when everyone was asleep people would have died. Can you imagine the chaos and confusion of waking up in a burning house full of thick, toxic smoke?
At first the fire trucks raced the wrong way as our street deadended on the bluff then picked up in the ravine below, so the trucks had to back out to come back around thru the neighborhood to the fire. Apparently the house number was a digit off.
The call came in from Morgan’s friend Natalie while I was stuck in heavy Seattle traffic and had to pee real bad. When I got the call and understood what was happening my whole body went cold and numb. I felt contraction and expansion. Got Kate, left Talia with her friend’s family, and called a number of people. Raced back to Seattle. Kate kept petting me on the shoulder to calm down and breathe. Finally after agonizing tries I got thru to Kristina at the vet’s. I struggled to stay focused on purpose and had to pull upon all my trainings.
The neighborhood was blocked off by police. It seemed dozens of fire trucks from different Snohomish County jurisdictions were there. Edmonds. Lynnwood. Mukilteo. Mountlake Terrace.Wow. Crews of over 30 fire fighters were highly organized to address specific tasks: preparing hoses, prepping oxygen tanks, fighting the fire. The house had exploded and glass had blown out into the woods and bushes around the home. American Red Cross volunteers were there to help us. They were methodical. There was a chaplain ministering to us and the teenage survivors. Another to get us focused on calling the insurance company, getting emergency funds, dealing with bureaucracy, and to address what’s next. Others to run food and drinks to firefighters, police, and to us. And a bathroom!
I just wanted to throw myself down on the ground and cry like a baby. But I couldn’t. Not in front of my daughters and their freaked out friends. Not in front of burly firefighters and stunned neighbors. Not in front of my dazed wife. When I finally had time alone to cry I couldn’t. I’d stuff the cork in so tight it was stuck. And intellectually I knew grief moved thru stages, it will all come as it comes, and there were tasks to address and urgent issues to move on to. Life goes on for the living, I like to say. But I just felt numb.
Kristina and I were overwhelmed. Many came to our support. We felt enormous gratitude and appreciation. A handful with project management experience crafted a website and a plan to help manage the high tide of help. And we needed help. One day all I had to wear was women’s clothes. All three kids had their needs to address. Each one experienced the fire and its aftermath differently. Even the dog was affected.
The days blurred by in a daze of little sleep and too much busy work. I spent hours either on the phone or down on my knees in sludgy rubble digging for photos and slides and documents and writings that may’ve survived. Miracously some did survive in a bunker-like storage room in the back basement. Most, though, did not. All furniture, all clothes and shoes, family antiques, heirlooms, portfolios of our children’s art, assorted memorabilia of a full life, all gone. It is easy to say it’s just good that we’re alive, that photos are just memories, and furniture can be replaced. But there is still a huge gaping void in our lives. The property itself was well over half-a-million dollars for the owner, our own personal possessions numbered a few hundred thousand dollars in losses, and the sentimental value is, of course, beyond any dollar amount.
Tears are healing, time passes, and life goes on for the living. And so we move forward, not to start over, but to relish every moment with gratitude and to simply move on one day at a time just glad to be above ground.

William Dudley Bass
March 28, 2010

A few days later my wife Kristina wrote the following:
UPDATE ON OUR RECOVERY PROCESS
· Posted by Kristina Katayama Bass on April 5, 2010 at 12:00am
First let me start by saying, Thank You.

In the chaos of the last few weeks, with my attention on many too things I have been in sporadic communication. I'm on a friends computer right now and just getting through all the emails that have come since the fire.
It's overwhelming and disorienting to lose everything in a fire ... recovery is made one step at a time.
I want to start by saying thank you for your outreach and many encouraging, loving words and offers of support. I have been touched and moved by many of you in many ways. Thank you.
A friend sent this quote that captures my thoughts in this moment:
"..almost everything – all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure - these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.” - Steve Jobs
Yes, in the face of death, something we all escaped in the fire and which in the end engulfed every material thing we owned. The life that remains is what is important ... and with this clean slate, I am free to follow my heart, just as I have always been, only now without any baggage or history, except for that which I choose to remember.
And I find without familiar material things, I feel quite disoriented and ungrounded. I don't know where I am in space, I have no reference points, nothing familiar. It is surreal. I am in an altered state. Time is distorted. And little-by-little as we rebuild, I know how important it is to be aware of my intent and my impact and stay in the process. We'll get there, wherever there is. Thank you for hanging in there with us.
On a practical level, let me give you a quick update:

Through the generosity of many, we have our immediate basics taken care of: a roof over our heads, food in our bellies, and clothes on our backs. (Although William was in a woman's top the other day, because that is all there was available at the time. Lime-green silk and chest hair make for an entertaining combination.)
Next step is finding a new home to relocate into. Then we can begin to gather, replace and receive all those things one needs (furniture, bedding, towels, dishes, office supplies, computer, etc ... oh yes, and our sports gear, can't forget that)
My daily mantra (many times a day) has become: "Shintiado with gratitude to the East! The time of day is morning. The time of year is spring. The time of life is birth. The way is being. ... vulnerable, dependent, curious, receptive, open, tender, blooming ... begin again, begin again, begin again ... "
In Gratitude,
Kristina K Bass
© 2010

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