House Fire at My Mom's

    So this morning there was a huge fire at my mom's house on Long Island.  Obviously this sucks.  And oddly it's the second house fire we've had in the last decade that has ruined the family home (the previous fire fucked the previous house up so bad that it wasn't salvageable).  Fortunately my mom got out of the house okay and she's not hurt physically, but dealing with this is going to take god knows how long, and we're just now beginning to comprehend how much damage was done and how much stuff we lost in the fire. 

As many of you know, my father died nearly three years ago exactly, and when he passed on he left behind a giant pile of stuff- some extremely valuable, and some absolutely valueless.  He was a major antiques collector, which, combined with his predilection for hoarding, meant that there was a lot of shit for us to figure out what the fuck it was.  Over the last couple of years we organized several massive auctions through a major auction house that-shall-go-unnamed, but since we knew very little about many of the paper items he bought (especially maps, art, and historical documents), most of those items were still in the house, and since they were stored in a room just a hallway away from where the fire started, consequently most of these items were destroyed or at least severely smoke damaged.  I hate to sound like a money-grubbing asshole under the circumstances, but the monetary amount of shit that was destroyed is absolutely staggering, and our insurance policy isn't going to come anywhere near covering a fraction of what was lost.  Fucking sucks.

Anyway, when I spoke to my mom's insurance company today they told me it would be a good idea to take some pictures to document the devastation before they pull a dumpster behind the house and dispose of our destroyed stuff.  For the viewing enjoyment of nobody, here they are.

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This is the staircase up to the second floor.  Looks a little grimy and smoke-damaged, but again most of the damage actually occurred above this.

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Yeah.  The above picture is of the hallway directly above the staircase from the previous picture.  Notice the window appears to be open; this is because the firemen had to knock out all the windows on the second floor so the house wouldn't overheat and just flat out fucking explode.  Pretty grim scene.

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Above is a picture of my late dad's bedroom, which we were using as storage for most of our paper valuables.  The pile of sooty documents in the middle of the picture is a pile about 50-100 items deep of historical documents, ancient maps (many going back to the 15th century) and art.  All damaged.

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Picture of the same room as above except a different angle.  Hey, at least the cardboard fucking box isn't damaged!  T'heh!  /kill me

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My mom's bedroom, where the fire started.  Take one look at this picture and realize HOW INCREDIBLY LUCKY we are that she wasn't hurt. 

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 The charred black hole at the bottom of this picture is where my mom's bed was.  Jesus.  Notice that the walls of the room are already torn out.  The firefighters did an AMAZING job confining the fire to this room and this room alone; if the flames had actually caught the roof on fire the house would have been totally lost. 

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A picture of the floor of mom's bedroom.  The sneakers in the middle make it look like the aftermath of a suicide bombing, no?  Shudder.

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All I'm going to say about this one is that the murky rectangle that covers the right half of the pic used to be a mirror.  A shiny one. 

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This is (or was) my mom's living room.  We originally thought that most of the first floor had escaped damage only to notice that the ceiling was actually leaking in some places, and "water bubbles" were covering the ceiling elsewhere.  My mom's bedroom (aka blaze central) is directly above this room, so it makes sense that the water had to drain out somewhere/somehow.  We pointed the "water bubbles" out to the contractor and he informed us that if we didn't lance the bubbles immediately the entire fucking ceiling would implode, which, of course would have destroyed this room and all of its contents.  So the things you see hanging from the ceiling mark the spots where we had to just literally rip holes in the ceiling.  The other half of the room (behind where I was standing when I took this picture) has at least another 10 holes poked in it, each with water buckets beneath.  What's more the contractor's "apprentices" were a pair of greasy, lazy motherfuckers who didn't feel like emptying the buckets that were rapidly filling under the poked holes, so that means yours truly had to run about 30-40 full buckets of water out of the house and onto the lawn so this room wouldn't get flooded.  I am physically BEAT.

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Well, that's all for now kiddies.  As much as having your mom's house burn down sucks, it's nowhere near as emotionally devastating as the prospect of another She and Him album.  UNCLEAN!!! UNCLEAN!!!!

Comments

[term life ins rates]

Things like these one happen either by accident or some other circumstances. However, damages caused by fire shouldn't be seen as minor, especially when someone is hurt. That happened to our neighbor's sister three years ago when their house was engulfed by fire. Having life insurance coverage proved helpful for the said family during that time.