Friday 13 June 2008 - Fire Update

Well, the main lodge was completely destroyed.  It's not terribly surprising considering they are 15 miles outside the village and the volunteer fire departments from the two neighboring villages take time to get called out.  The nearest fire station was at least 20 miles away and the other at least 30. 

What really knotted my gut was the fact it started with a propane refrigerator.  When we first moved to Alaska we had everything propane -- heat, stove, fridge, even lights.  We had carbon monoxide detectors up that always went off each evening if we had the lights on too long (easy to do where there is so little sunlight in winter).  We would normally just crack the windows a tiny bit and all was good. 

But one night, that didn't help.  We went everywhere with the detectors and finally figured out it was the heat exhaust on the fridge.  That was scary.  I called my then-boyfriend who clearly didn't want to come out.  So I tried all the "local" propane appliance sales and repair shops but, as I suspected, didn't get an answer from anyone.  It was hard even getting a cell signal strong enough to call any of them... we ended up sleeping with the windows wide open despite the frigid temperatures and winds. 

Then-BF showed up the next day and after some fiddling figured out there was a compartment with a hidden brush (sort of like a mini chimney broom like they carried around house to house when I lived in Dublin, where we and most of our neighbors still then heated mainly with coal).  He brushed it out and everything returned to normal once I got the soot cleaned up.  It had been a scary night though as a family had recently died overnight of carbon monoxide poisoning in a home far bigger than the one we were house-sitting for.

So back to the fire here, this was basically the same scenario -- they didn't know they needed to clean that out.  The soot built up, and somehow ignited.  The wife went in and saw sparks shooting out of it and then it spread so fast they hardly had any time to get everyone out of the house.  Two kids had just returned from Bible camp and had still-packed suitcases so they came away with some clothing still -- just the youngest lost everything of his... and the parents.

They're insured, and not terribly bad off.  They run the place as a rustic lodge (the most rustic - and therefore cheapest - in the area).  They're insured and don't live here year round... but getting stuff flown or barged in takes time, so help was still needed... and I'm sure it was still traumatic.  It's traumatic to me just to realize the rest of the scenario we could have faced on that mountainside, twelve miles out of town on the side of a mountain during a snowy and very windy winter, on a night when the wind chills were down around -50 or so...