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Small miracles and a million things to do
Kootenay Crust – By Ian Cobb
Op-Ed Commentary
The older one gets the faster the years fly by. A truism. Another one I have just discovered in the past month is how fast life passes by after a house fire.
One month ago today our house burst into flames and our lives became a daily rampage of getting shit done. When you have a million things to do and only 24 hours in a day, the mountain appears unconquerable.
But we step forward one pace and task at a time and blinking and looking back I see that we have secured a lovely trailer to live in on the property to continue to tend to Carrie’s Pa and be close at hand to get stuff done. The trailer fell in our laps thanks to friends Aline and Larry from Windermere, who delivered and helped set up the trailer a mere four days after the blaze.
A few days after the fire we hazmatted up and entered the house to bag all our clothing and recon the damage done. By the time we were done, we were black as the ace of spades and we were working in rooms that only received smoke and a bit of water damage. There is a thick soot everywhere, even in cupboards and dresser drawers situated the farthest from the fire.
We thought we could rescue our beloved kitchen bits and pieces and implements and after being advised against it, we still tried and realized it’s a waste of time. Smoke even damaged exposed stainless steel.
The initial tours inside the house told us we’d lost massive amounts of personal items, from artwork to writings, music to mementoes, books to valuable collectibles. The melted piles of computers, printers, stereo gear, honours and photographs said we’d lost most of our operational gear, personal info and business items.
In the rush of getting things done, we secured a trailer for Carrie’s dad to live in, then got him a better one; we secured a home for the winter that is nearby to access the property easily courtesy a nice couple who winter in Mexico (thanks to Donna for arranging that) and we dealt with insurance (Danielle has been amazing), inspections, personal items categorizing (Keitha was awesome) and still kept e-KNOW ticking along.
The help and kindness of friends and family has been life affirming. Beautiful gestures and strong shoulders, hugs and help of all kinds have buoyed us and given us strength we didn’t know we had at this stage of life. Kiddos Amanda and Steve have been rocks and grandkid Amara has been such a support!
Each day we realize what more has been lost to the fire. Yet, countering that, each day we realize what has not been lost. Small miracles occur each day.
Bless the person who constructed Carrie’s late mother’s desk, which I have been using the last 12 years. Despite everything burned and melted on top of my desk and around it, everything in the drawers, including most of the important paper work of my life and business, was pristine. Not even smoke damaged and it was essentially located in the dead centre of the fire. One helluva well built desk!
Beside my desk was about 400 unheard homemade music CDs (yes I am old) – all singed and beside them about 400 store bought CDs, all showing signs of glistening melt. I ignored them for a week, assuming they were literally toast.
But a week after the fire, as I was departing for Radium to buy a gazebo to place beside our trailer (our new outdoor office I am writing in at this moment), I decided to check the homemade CDs. Now in that slug of music CDs was a series I created as part of a renewed will (for a wake and funeral) two years prior. It so happened that I randomly grabbed that exact series of CDs. I had to tear the paper cover of the first CD as it had been soaked, as well as singed. I pulled the CD out and it appeared okay. I shoved it in the car CD player and it worked!
A CD I made to be played upon my death, which I thought was lost, was alive after all. Shed a few tears as I headed north and inserted the next CD in line in the series and it worked, too. I came back to life that day.
When I returned home, the roughly 4,000 CDs I assumed lost were once again back in the game. It has taken me three weeks now to sort and dry them and it appears as though only about 400 are toasted. Like me they are tattered and smoked out but relatively intact. Amazing if you could see where they had been sitting in relation to the fire.
Another small miracle included finding my son’s baby shoes; one was melted and the other just a bit roughed up. And a chair my son loved as a tot survived – something that brought me to tears when I found it.
For those who know me and are curious, my LP collection survived but had a fair dose of smoke. Thanks to being wrapped in plastic covers and packed tightly together in strong bins, they’re okay.
And I must again thank the Cranbook firefighters for their prompt and most effective response. You can tell looking at where the fire was stopped and how heat and smoke did their damage, that our home was minutes away from being completely destroyed by fire. I’ve always held mad respect for firefighters having seen how they save countless lives and homes each year by being on the camera end of fires. The professionalism and compassion displayed by the firefighters, as well as insurance (Westland) and Bravo Restoration has been incredible I am happy to report.
And in closing, I am going to be mildly political.
One thing I have noticed is how people are all the same when it comes to compassion and support. Being a journalist, my circle of friends is extremely diverse, from left to right, with most in the middle.
However, despite being right or left or right in the middle they are all saying the exact same things and offering the exact same support. No politics just life and love and support.
That is the East Kootenay, British Columbia and Canada I know and love.
That is a takeaway for me in all this. And I hope people can read this and realize that there is so much more to life that is special to all of us and bonds us all and this divisiveness stemming from current political tactics and fetid social media sites has to stop.
Love and support has been our lifeblood the last weeks and we cannot thank everyone enough. Complete strangers have offered to help out! That is the community we live in! It’s why we live here and with that support we will rise again here.
– Ian Cobb is e-KNOW owner and editor
