Derailed

Derailed

My house burned down on the morning of Saturday, March 20, 2010. We lost almost everything, “we” being a post-double divorce blended family with my wife Kristina and our three daughters from prior marriages. Fortunately no one was burned or injured in anyway. Thankfully no one was killed in what the fire fighters called “a killer fire.” So far there are no lawsuits flying and we continue to work things out with our insurance company. A small number of items survived in the garage, which was the least damaged part of the house. Our two cars survived simply because they weren’t there. It was a horrible time. We moved five times through temporary housing until we settled down in a rental in early June. We were all stressed out and some of us had nightmares. One day all I had to wear was women’s clothes. We were humbled and awed by the generosity of many people including strangers. People gave us money, gift cards, clothes, food, utensils, pots and pans, and furniture. Lots of furniture. You should see our house now. It’s a crazy quilt of stuff. And it works.

This fire was an initiation. Although into what we’re still discovering. We thought we would bounce back fully by now. Oh no. People who have survived catastrophic house fires say it takes months, even years to get over the losses. Thank goodness it was in Washington State in the American Pacific Northwest and not in a remote place or an impoverished, war-torn developing country. We have much to be grateful for. And we are grateful. We’ve maintained our sense of humor, though sometimes it’s tough. People were very generous in many ways. It all felt so humbling to allow ourselves to receive after being such givers in the past.

My oldest daughter had celebrated her 16th birthday the night before and had a number of girl friends over for a slumber party. Eight of them were still home with her when they noticed smoke rolling out from the heat vents and up from the stairs below. My wife and I had just left about 11:00 am to run errands; she to the vet and me to pick up the two youngest girls from their own sleepover parties elsewhere. At first the teenagers thought it must be one of them burning something on the stove. But no, no one was even boiling water for tea. The stove was turned off.

Thick, toxic smoke rapidly filled the house. These kids couldn’t even get out the front door. So they dashed out to the back deck almost one story up and jumped off into ferns and bushes. Many of them were in underwear and tee shirts or in pajamas.

The fire was catastrophic. The whole structure was in flames in less than a half-hour. It was a beautiful, model solar energy home designed and built by local but now-deceased architects. Their two sons owned it. It was a two-story structure almost 4,000 square feet built on the edge of a bluff looking out down a long, wooded ravine toward the Salish Sea and the Olympic Mountains beyond. After losing our other two homes in the Recession we had hoped to eventually buy this house. Of course, that didn’t, couldn’t happen.

From a home office point of view our library was destroyed. Our computers were melted. A friend of mine did extract the hard drives from 3 of them and managed to save most of the data. I cracked open my melted Nikon, extracted the memory card, and happily discovered almost 800 photos on there. Now we back up “into the Cloud.” We lost almost a half-million dollars of personal possessions. Much of that were items Kristina and I had purchased over the years, but most of it was the accumulated wealth of generations from our parents, grandparents, great-grandparents, and many aunts and uncles and even great-aunts and uncles. A lavish but old Buddhist shrine from my wife’s Japanese side of the family vanished in the fire. Photography was a serious hobby of mine, so most of my photographs and slides, tens of many thousands of them, are gone forever. Baby books, mine, my parents, and those of my children, gone forever. High school and college yearbooks, gone forever. I was also the family historian, so I’d accumulated boxes and boxes of archives from family members back East. Miraculously some survived, such as the contents of the old Bass Family Bible Box, but most of these papers disappeared in the flames and smoke forever.

Our family was woefully underinsured. It was complicated by overlapping real estate transitions and by misleading information from a particular agent in over his head. We'll probably just receive a tiny fraction of the true value of what we lost after the insurance company depreciates and devalues our possessions. Certain staff have been kind and generous in serving us and it is not enough. I encourage everyone to video record all your possessions and store it offsite. Don't waste time writing down everything. It'll take forever and you won't do it.

We are still recovering. Furthermore, the aggregate of international companies my wife and I once worked for as self-employed independent contractors crashed in the recession back in late 2007-early 2008. Not only did we lost our high-paying positions, but to our horror all our savings and investments in this venture. We were shocked to discover that two men high up in the network allegedly embezzled almost two billion dollars from over 3,000 people. Greed got the better hand within an alternative structure designed to allow middle and working class families to pool resources to gain access to sophisticated financial structures. We were all defrauded. Including those of us who worked there. It was outrageous, embarrassing, and gut wrenching.

These two monsters are now in jail, but the money seems gone. We don’t know if we’ll ever see any of it again. The dominoes tumbled. We were unable to find high-paying positions although I did pick up a part-time retail job and some small free lance writing projects. Kristina worked as a business coach and consultant, but it was very intermittent. As our home near Lake Wenatchee slid into foreclosure and then our home in North Seattle, we entered into a tedious short-sale process that finally completed this August of 2010. We moved to Edmonds, then the fire happened that Saturday morning. We felt we were drowning.

The fire was estimated to be at least 1,200 degrees Fahrenheit at times because the nails remain straight. This meant the flames were so hot it burned the wood right off the nails faster than the nails could sag beneath the weight of burning wood. Investigators determined it most likely appeared to have been faulty wires in the wall downstairs in my oldest daughter’s bedroom or maybe the wires from an outlet in the same wall. Looked as if old aluminum wires separated from copper, they arced, sparked, and set the wood afire. The lack of sheetrock facilitated the spread of the flames. Nor did the fire alarms go off at first as the smoke rolled out. The fire fighters and the investigators mused that if it had happened in the middle of the night there certainly would’ve been fatalities. And I’m sure I would have been one of them as it would’ve been my nature to rush into the fire and fight it. But the toxic smoke would’ve taken us out first, it was explained to us.

As it was it took over 30 firefighters from Edmonds, Lynnwood, Mukilteo, and maybe Shoreline responding to a two-alarm fire. We were only there 3 months.

The fire was the latest in a series of crushing hammer blows to our family. We move on anyway. In working with a therapist and counselor we became familiar with the term “derailment.” We were derailed by the loss of our jobs, our savings, our homes, and especially by that fire and the constant moving around afterwards. BAM! BAM! BAM! BAM! BAM! BAM! BAM!

Now my wife's mother is moving into our temporary rental with us. The bank foreclosed on her condo, declined the offers from a short-sale attempt, and got zero offers at an auction. My mother-in-law had once retired early, thrived on a frugal lifestyle, and was to a degree financially free. Yet with the loss of her funds in the same embezzlement that hit us she found herself looking for work with little success and is now in dire straights. So another BAM! And we have to maintain our wits about us, laugh at all the funny things around in, appreciate our friends and family, and remember that our glasses are at least half-full and certainly not empty.

My apologies for the impact all of this has had on my blogging here. It’s taking me for longer to get back up on my feet than I thought. I also have a lot of train track to rebuild before even getting back on it, too. It’s going to take time. We have plenty of that. We hope. There’s much to do, much to be grateful for, much to still laugh about, life to live for with all its work and play. Aye, indeed, life goes on for us the living. Thank you.

William Dudley Bass

October 1, 2010

* This was jointly published on the author's Current Affairs blog "At the Brink with William Dudley Bass."

(C) Copyright 2010, 2011 by William Dudley Bass.

After the Fire

After the Fire

Days and weeks wheel by in a blur. Frenzied action is broken by spells of dazed inaction. There is too much to do so soon. We move through it all anyway. Sometimes we even laugh.

The temporary rental in Woodinville is lovely but too far away from almost everything else. Our commute is complicated as before the fire in Edmonds our three daughters still go to school in North Seattle and move back and forth in different custody arrangements with our ex-spouses. Yes, Kristina and I have crafted a Post-Modern post-double divorce blended family over the past 8 years, and while successful it is a lot of work. Our exes, however, have been wonderfully supportive in this crisis. It never made any sense to us to be at war with those we once loved in years long gone.

We miss Edmonds, though, but are looking for temporary housing closer to our children's schools. Stability is important to us now. Kristina and I long for floors and walls and a roof and yard to push against and call our own. Being homeless feels strange. While we both love to travel and have extensive backgrounds in living out of backpacks, we always had a home to return to somewhere.

People's generosity humbles us. The kindness of strangers is not proverbial to us. It is reality. Many we don't even know have responded with amazing generosity. Gifts of cash, checks, gift cards, free healing and therapy sessions, free childcare, free dog care, clothes for all 5 of us, the loan of this very laptop I'm typing upon; it astounds us. We have given much ourselves in the past, but to allow ourselves to receive so much has truly been an education.

For now the basics are covered. We're going back to work: Kristina as a business coach and consultant, William as a freelance writer/editor who also works in sales at the Seattle REI. Morgan is a sophomore at Roosevelt High, Kate is finishing 5th Grade at B.F. Day, and Talia is in 2nd Grade at Whittier. All three excel in school. Morgan recently made all A's, Kate achieved stellar results in all areas from academics to sports, and Talia shines in the advanced Spectrum program. They each deal with the stress of the fire in their own way, although often it seems they deal with it better than me and Kristina. Kids are so resilient.

Sometimes dealing with the insurance companies seems worse than the fire itself. It is not a personal thing, but the tedious, labor-intensive tasks of creating and completing an exhaustingly detailed inventory of all items lost in the fire that we can remember, where we bought them, how much we paid for and when, addressing the details of the claims, and how much time it demands away from everything else including careers, parenting, and securing a home.

Sometimes I go back to the burn site. The blackened ruins and ashy rubble with their peculiar burnt stench are in stark contrast to the profusion of flowers and greenery around the property. Any openings left are boarded up with shock-white plywood. The stunning views of the Salish Sea and the Olympic Mountains framed so perfectly by banked rows of trees still remains. Life goes on. There is much to be grateful for even in the wake of such loss. We are already emerging stronger than before. This Fire is an Initiation, unplanned, unwanted, and still an initiation...although into what we're not sure. Others we've met with who have survived catastrophic fires all claim that to go through such an experience transformed them and will transform us.

I don't return there as much anymore. My attention is demanded elsewhere. I get back into my car and drive away, practicing being at peace with the trauma of unexpected loss. As I look around me, I am somehow reminded all my ancestors are but memories but they live within my cells. One day, too, Kristina and I and even our children will be but memories to our own future relations. Eventually the greatest legacy fades into oblivion while a wealth of resources remain from which to generate future prosperity. To paraphrase Wallace Stevens, a poet who was also an insurance agent, "everything changes yet remains the same."

It is a beautiful Sunday morning. And it'll rain tomorrow. And shine again. We smile just the same.

Thank you.

William Dudley Bass

(C) 2010