-By Bob Wade, DAT Night Team Leader/Supervisor — ARC of SE Wisconsin — Milwaukee, WI.

Saturday, October 18, 2008

I’m covering as Team Leader for the day team this weekend.  

At 9:40am this morning I am dispatched to a working house fire in the 2400 block of W. Orchard Street on the Southside of Milwaukee.

Upon arrival at the scene, I see a 1-½ story wood-frame dwelling with heavy smoke pouring from every window.  Firefighters have already cut about a 3’ x 10’ hole in the roof.

I park the van and call in, “5414 is at the scene.”   Tim Byers, from the night team, is responding as well.

As I enter the perimeter of the fire scene, I quickly scan my surroundings, looking for the occupants from this home.  There, standing in the middle of the street, is a lone woman speaking with a Milwaukee Police Department (MPD) officer.  I approach them.

The Officer sees me and directs the woman’s attention towards me. “This gentleman is from the American Red Cross and he will assist you,” he states.

As I introduce myself to her, I realize that she is crying.  When I shake her hand, she doesn’t want to let go so I continue to hold it.

I assure her that I am there to get her and her family back on the road to recovery and explain what Red Cross can do towards accomplishing that goal.

Firefighters start throwing the burning belongings of this family out of a side window and into the alleyway.  That catches everyone’s attention and there’s a brief silence on the street around us.

It’s fall here in Wisconsin and there’s a bit of a chill in the air; I notice that the woman is only half dressed, so offer to get her a pair of sweatpants and a sweatshirt.  She told me that she would very much appreciate that.

When I return with supplies for the family, the woman is sitting on a raised concrete curb, halfway up the driveway of the house next door.  I sit down next to her and ask her if I can get the interview information from her.  There’s a large rottweiler with them, it comes over to me as I’m doing the interview and places its head upon my lap. 

The woman begins telling me her story of how her morning started out and what happened once she realized that her house was on fire.

“I was cooking steaks and eggs in the kitchen, then all of the sudden, I started to smell something strange burning.  It was like a bad rubber smell,’ she told me. 

“Once I realized that the front bedroom was on fire, I started screaming for everyone to get out of the house!  I threw my jewelry, purse, and my two birds out of the house.  I even took the steak and eggs with me,” she chuckled. 

“I can’t believe I brought the steaks out with me.  I didn’t know what I was doing, or what to do,” she said as she laughed out loud at herself.

“Because I didn’t have my phone with me, I started running around the neighborhood, screaming for help, screaming for someone to call for help.  It seemed as if no one was home in my entire neighborhood because no one came out.  When someone finally did, they looked at me like I was crazy.  I told them that I wasn’t kidding, that my house was on fire, and to call 911!”

It was actually good to see that she was already joking about what she had just been through, even as the firefighters were still at work in her home.  I could already tell that this woman was resilient.

After completing the interview, I asked the woman to start thinking of any family members or friends in the area where they might be able to stay.

She said they had homeowner’s insurance, but when I called Allstate, the woman on the phone stated that they didn’t have them on record in their computer system.

I was told that the insurance policy papers were in colored folders in the living room, on the couch.  A few minutes later, a police officer came up to me and asked if I’d like to come in to the house with him and inspect the damage.  I followed in right behind him.  The Fire Department had just left the scene.

In through the front door and into the living room, I’m confronted with complete devastation.  Everything is burned by the fire or blackened by the smoke.  It’s an overwhelming sight for me, and I’ve been to quite a few fires.

The fire apparently started in the bedroom off the living room.  The wall separating the two rooms is gone.  There is heavy debris everywhere, covering everything that this family called “home”.   

The officer I’m with is concerned that the fire is still smoldering.  We look into the bedroom and see smoke still rising from underneath a pile of splintered wood.

“This fire isn’t completely out!” the officer next to me yelled.  “The Fire Department is going to end up having to come back here.  This fire is going to start up again.”

The MPD officer went on to point out to me, “There are accelerants in that room, but look, they’re not even open,” as he nudged a couple small cans of turpentine with his foot.

“This can’t be it!”

As we walk into the kitchen, I see that even the cans of food in the pantry are blackened, some even melted, and that was just from the hot smoke.  The flames didn’t appear to make it into the kitchen.

Up on the 2^nd floor, there is a lot of water damage to everything, as well as a huge hole in the roof.  It is so hot up there, from the fire, which has been out for over an hour now, it’s physically hard for me to breathe.

Down in the basement, there is very little damage, but we hear water dripping from the floor above.

It’s just a quick walk-through for me that first time in the house.  As I get back to the family outside, I tell them what I saw, as delicately as I can.  I know they’re already very upset, and I don’t want to overwhelm them with more bad news.

I ask my teammate, Tim, if he would like to go back into the house to do an official damage assessment.  He runs over to his vehicle to put his boots on and we head back in. 

While in the living room, we again try to locate the insurance paper folders, with no success. There’s so much debris on top of everything, it’s hard to figure out what’s what. 

We head on back outside and gather up more supplies for the family members; comfort kits and more sweat suits; we’ve already authorized a client assistance card for food.

I ask the woman from the house to again describe what the insurance folders look like and where they might be.

“They are all organized in red, yellow, blue and green folders.  They should be right on the love seat in the living room…the two-seater,” she said.

I decide to go back in for another look.  The best news for this family is that everyone made it out unharmed and that they have homeowner’s insurance. However, after not getting anywhere during my phone call with Allstate Insurance, I’m starting to get worried for them. 

As I walk back in through the front door, I hear an officer, from out of sight, ask, “Who is it?” 

“Red Cross,” I reply.

“OK, come on in,” he says.

Two MPD officers are in with the fire investigator now, trying to determine the cause of the fire.  They’re not having much success at that.

With my bare hands, I start to pull soaking wet pieces of the ceiling and other unidentifiable chunks of debris off of the two couches in the living room.  I find a leather briefcase. 

“Maybe this is it,” I think to myself.

I take that outside and show it to the family. 

“Nope, that’s not it.”

I go back in and look some more…Nothing.  One of the officers has brought the woman in to ask what was sitting next to where the inside wall of the bedroom once was. 

“The futon was right there,” she replied.  There were two 3-yr olds sharing that bedroom.

“OK.  Can you guys give us ten minutes in here, then we’ll turn this scene over to you?” the officer asked me.

I help the woman out of the house and go back outside and wait. 

Other family members and relatives continue to arrive at the scene.  They are all doing their best to help.   

The alderman from this district, Bob Donovan, has shown up as well. A woman from across the street comes over and hands the family clothing.“Here’s something for you and your family to wear,” she says. 

One of the best parts of this job is watching neighbors come out of their homes to bring clothing, food, words of compassion, hugs and you-name-it to the individuals directly affected by a disaster.   That is one of the tiny miracles at fire calls.  It doesn’t happen often, but when it does, it is the most wonderful thing to see.  Once the officers were done in the house, I knew that we weren’t leaving until we found those insurance papers. 

I decided to give it one last try and went back into the house.  The man of the house was in the living room throwing debris out of one of the windows.  I started digging down into the areas in front of the couches and found a flashlight, then handed it to him.  He laughed and said something in Spanish, which I could not understand, then went right back at throwing items out the window. 

Underneath quite a bit more of the debris, right below where that flashlight was, were four soaking wet folders…red, yellow, green and blue ones, and they weren’t burned.

I found them!

I carefully picked them up, walked out the front door and then held them straight up into the air as I walked towards the family. They let out a little cheer. 

As they were going through them, the woman fell out of the walker chair that she was sitting in, right on to the sidewalk, on to her behind.  I ran over to see if she was ok and helped her back up.  Thankfully, she was a-ok!

It looked like things were headed in the right direction for this family now, and I did a quick check in my head to make sure we, as representatives of the American Red Cross, did everything we possibly could.

I double-checked with Tim and we wrapped things up for the day. 

The family was going to stay with a family member not far from there and they said they had figured out whom to call for the insurance claim. 

At 5:15pm this evening, Carolyn, the ARC Duty Worker, called me and stated that the family had just called her and said they would need a place to stay after all.  I called Tim and he said he’d meet me there.

When I arrived back at the house, I could see that the board-up company was there and finishing up covering the broken out windows to the house.  A small child had a wagon full of plants and was pulling them across the street. 

Tim and I had come across a room full of plants, from wall-to-wall, up on the 2^nd floor earlier this morning, while doing the damage assessment.

I walked up to the house and greeted the man and woman and asked them how they were holding up.

“Pretty good,” they said.  I could tell that they had been busy getting everything cleaned up and situated as best they could.  They were covered in soot, as I was when I got back home from this fire call this morning.

They had been in contact with their insurance company, which wouldn’t be coming out until Monday.

Because the insurance company had not offered to place them in a hotel and they had not thought to ask, I asked them if they’d like to stay in a hotel for the rest of the weekend.  They liked that idea.

We finally got to meet the gentleman who rented the upstairs bedroom.  He had been away at work when the fire broke out this morning. 

On a checklist of how bad a ‘bad day’ can be, imagine what it would be like to come home from a hard day at work, only to find your house burned up.  Can a bad day get any worse than that?

He appeared to be in good spirits as I spoke with him. He couldn’t understand a word I said, but thankfully I had a translator. 

Everyone was busy taking care of business there, no one complaining, everyone working so hard to make things right once again. This family appeared to be very strong and we felt they would recover well. 

Filed under: Disaster Response, Volunteers