Goodbye Minivan

For over 2 weeks nothing could be done with the house until the investigation was finished.  The insurance had to notify the companies they feel are responsible for the fire.  They sent them a lawsuit notification letter and had to give them the opportunity to come to the house and do their own investigation of the fire.  It was a very painful part of the process for us because NOTHING could be done at the house and we didn't know how long the waiting process would be.

The day they finally notified us that we could go ahead and start rebuilding they said the first step was getting the van out of the garage.  We arranged to have it hauled away the next day.

The van was full of all kinds of holiday decorations.  We could see something from every holiday that had fallen in through the top of the van.

Part of what I heard exploding during the fire were the airbags and the windows from the van.

Not sure how the tow truck didn't get a ticket - there were things flying out of the windows as they drove down the street.

Had to get a picture of the four of us in front of the burned flag in front of our house before the construction began.

Clothes Shopping

For our own clothes...

Apparently there are companies that come in after fires, floods, etc. and clean all of your clothes, towels, sheets, curtains, rugs, pillows, etc.   They rushed what we needed for 2 weeks and then after the 2 weeks we went to a warehouse in Concord where all of our stuff was cleaned and stored. 

I picked the kids up from school and we had about an hour to look through everything and decide what we wanted to have while we were in the rental house and what we wanted them to store until we're back in our home.  It was a little crazy to try and look through everything and make quick decisions, but we did it.

It was surprising how much stuff was in the warehouse.  There are a lot of people going through what we are.

Kaitlyn was very happy to get her clothes back!

Most of our stuff was bagged in dry cleaning bags and EVERYTHING we owned was tagged with these little blue tags.  Most Sundays we are still cutting the tags off Mike's ties during Sacrament Meeting.  Someday we'll be done cutting off blue tags.

Back To School

We made it out of the hotel and into our rental house

just in time for school to start.

 

Logan is off for his first day of 8th grade.

One last year of middle school for the Fontaine's.

 

Kaitlyn is ready to start her senior year of high school -

or should I say ready to get her senior year of high school over with.

 

Still had to figure out how to make our chalkboard

brownies with our limited kitchen resources.

Here is the rental house we moved into the day before school started.

Our home away from home for the next three months.

After the Fire

Before the firemen left they gave us this pamphlet "After the Fire" to help us to know what to do next.  As things quickly became very crazy with tons of people and paperwork I found an old binder and started putting everything fire related into it.  I kept it with me through the whole process to keep things straight.

Kaitlyn had left her scriptures in the van.  They survived, but not very well.

Kaitlyn and I were very sad that we lost most of our holiday decorations.  She kept pulling what she could find out of the pile of our burned stuff.  Most of our decorations could not be salvaged, but it was surprising how well the restoration company could restore some of our stuff.

This is where they think the fire began.  It was where a battery charger was stored on a corner of Mike's workbench.  We had the charger there for years with no problems.  We still don't know why it caught fire.

This is how the airplane Logan received for his birthday looked after the fire.

The remote control car Logan got for his birthday.

Our charred boogie boards.

Mike's helicopter.

Mike's tool box.

 The charge to board up the garage, put a tarp over our stuff and to put a fence around it was huge - thank goodness for good insurance!! 

 

The Fire

So here's what happened...

On July 31, 2014 around 8:45am Logan came upstairs to my bedroom and asked if he could take the dog he was dog sitting for a walk.  When he left my room he said he could see something kind of cloudy or foggy in our upstairs skylight.  He looked downstairs and it looked the same in front of our garage door.  He went downstairs and opened the garage door and saw a ton of black smoke in the garage.  He immediately yelled FIRE!  I walked out of my room to tell him that wasn't funny and he was never to joke about things like that.  When he saw me he said call 911 and started yelling Kaitlyn's name and then the smoke detector went off.

Kaitlyn isn't sure if the smoke in her room, Logan yelling her name or the smoke detector woke her up.  She said before she opened her eyes she was wondering what we had burned in the kitchen.  When she opened her eyes and turned around she couldn't see her window across her bedroom because her room was filled with dark gray smoke.  She said what they teach you in kindergarten is true - the whole room was filled with smoke except for a few inches at the bottom of the room.  She got up, went downstairs, walked to the backyard and sat on the trampoline.

There was tons of black smoke coming in through the garage door.  I ran downstairs to look in the garage and it was completely filled with black smoke.  You couldn't see anything.  We shut the garage door, grabbed the phone to call 911 and went into the backyard.  I'm not sure why we all went to the backyard it just seemed like all the craziness and danger was in the front of the house.

After I called 911 I called Mike at work.  When I told him the house was on fire he told me to get the fire extinguisher in the kitchen.  He didn't understand that we were way past fire extinguisher help.  I was there and I couldn't understand how bad it was or really understand what was going on.  I just kept saying please hurry, please hurry as I saw huge clouds of black smoke coming over the top of my house and hearing sounds of things exploding coming from the garage.

This is what Mike saw in our front yard when he got home...

The fireman in the blue t-shirt came to our side gate and tried to open it.  When it wouldn't open Logan and I watched as he pushed it with one shoulder and broke it open with no problem.  He saw us standing in the backyard and said "sorry".  Not sure why he said sorry, he was trying to save our house.  I think he was surprised to see us back there.

 

We never saw the flames - just smoke.  When they started using the fire hoses the water came clear over the house and even hit the trampoline where Kaitlyn was still sitting.

 

The fireman in the white jacket was the one in charge.  He came to the backyard and talked to me several times.  The first time he came back he said the fire was out, but they couldn't figure out why there was still so much smoke inside the house so they needed to go in to make sure there were no fires inside.  He was followed by about five fireman in their full suits with gas masks and the biggest axes I've ever seen.  When they came out they said they didn't find any fire inside.  They went back inside with big fans, opened all the windows, threw out all the upstairs screens and blew the smoke out of the house.

Station 88 is the fire station a few blocks from our house.  I asked the fire chief if the firemen were from our local department.  He said there are only three firemen stationed there.  Five fire stations from the area were at our house working on the fire.

(Some of the pictures are out of order, but for some reason blogger won't let me move them and I give up :))

Our stairs after the firemen checked the house.



 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 
 

























(can't get rid of this extra space - again I give up!)

Above are Mike's helicopters. 

Part of the terrible sounds we were hearing out of the garage were the windows and airbags in the van exploding.

Below is where my holiday decorations used to live.

If Logan had not shut the garage door the fireman said we probably would have lost the entire house within 10-12 minutes.  We were lucky the "1 hour garage door" did its job and kept the fire in the garage.

The drywall hanging down in the entry way is where the firemen used their huge axes to put a hole in the ceiling to check for fire.

 

Checking out the back of the van. 

This is probably the scariest thing we have ever been through, but we were all so grateful for how blessed we were that it wasn't worse.  Logan found the fire before the smoke detector went off or it could have been much worse.  Kaitlyn was asleep in a room filled with smoke.  We try not to think about how much worse that could have been.  The firemen told us we were lucky there was not a backdraft when Logan opened the garage door.  It was scary to be home, but everything would definitely be gone if we hadn't been.  We try not to think of all the "what ifs".  We are just grateful to all be together and safe!