Our Homes Are Burning

Devastation.  There’s no other word for it.  An old building on the end of Spring Street in Bolivar housing seniors and handicapped people burnt beyond recognition on March 26.  A neighbor told me it was so hot standing in front of his home that he was afraid the wooden chair that he keeps by his front door would spontaneously combust.  The fire was horrific.  He couldn’t stand outside and watch because of the unbearable heat it put off, but he told me he watched long enough to see the wind carry in minutes the fire from one end of the building to the other along the roofline.

Newer buildings would have firewalls between units in the attic level, but this one did not.  And so instead of losing one or two homes, we lost eight.  Eight homes.  The residents lost everything.

When I first heard about it and went to investigate, I couldn’t get near.  The police officer guiding traffic away said that in the two hours he’d been there no ambulances had gone racing away, so he hoped that meant no one was critically injured.  He said that there were at least ten fire trucks and a bunch of ambulances on the scene.

The neighbor who told me he thought his chair would burn said that twenty-fire trucks from fire companies as far away as Maryland and Winchester responded.  And yet it was a total loss.  More than a total loss.  Only one building was destroyed, but because the water system in that spot was not designed to combat a fire like that, the fire fighters were compelled to open the water main that feeds neighboring apartments.  The water for people in those homes was still cut off when I spoke to them and they had been told that even when it came back on, they would be under a boil water advisory.

It doesn’t really soften the pain of those who lost everything, but thankfully we have neighboring states that are willing to help.  But why don’t we have the capacity ourselves?  Thankfully, these out of state men and women worked alongside our excellent volunteers and were able to save the rest of the neighborhood.  The police officer I talked to was correct and no one was killed or physically hurt (although I imagine they will be traumatized and have emotional scars for a lifetime).

It was painful for me to look at.  It wasn’t just this fire that hit my heart, it was reliving the many fires that I’ve seen in the 25 years I’ve lived in Jefferson County.  My own neighborhood was started in 1960 – long before Jefferson County started to require building permits and inspections.  In the quarter century I’ve lived in this now 74-house subdivision, there have been a dozen electric fires that I know of.  Two houses burnt to the ground and families lost everything.

Last October, over in Shannondale, a dear friend lost her family house and her father and sister.  Her mother had burns all over her body and spent months in the hospital.  She is still not fully recovered.  We live in West Virginia, and thankfully our neighbors care.  Thousands of dollars and many donations of clothing, toiletries, blankets, and other household necessities poured in.

The most recent house to burn to the ground in my neighborhood happened a year ago January. I’m happy to say neighbors stepped up offering places to stay, the use of a car, and many items the family needed.

We are in a good place with good people. That is special beyond belief, but it’s tragic that this happens so often.  I’m told Jefferson County got building codes before other counties in the state.  How many people suffer similar fates across the state?

We all know unions brought us weekends, forty-hour work weeks, and safer working conditions, but do we know if a house burns, it may be because it was wired by amateurs? Could it have been prevented if a certified union electrician had done the job?  A professional would have known how to avoid mistakes. It can take decades before a badly placed wire overheats and causes a fire, but when it does people suffer?

I was lucky to discover that a well-meaning home electrician put a 60 amp circuit breaker in the lower level of my house where 15’s should have been installed.  If we had overloaded that circuit, there’s no way the circuit breaker would have saved us.  Not everyone is so lucky.  I don’t know what caused the fire in Bolivar, but I feel for the people who lost so much.  Where will they go?  It’s not like this county has a surplus of affordable housing.

Please everyone, if you pray, pray for them.  If you care, find out more about this fire and how you can help the victims.

When our water is insufficient to put out a fire, do we think about why that is?  When it is cut off due to broken pipes or we are under boil water advisories several times a year due to bad plumbing, do we think about the fact that union certified plumbers would have known better to install pipes correctly?  Even relatively new housing, like the places built between Halltown and CW Shipley Elementary suffer from this.  In my own, much older neighborhood, it was impossible to drink the water without getting headaches and upset stomachs when I first moved here because the old pipes had rotted away.  We have since received a grant and replaced those pipes, but what happens when there’s no grant money?

In West Virginia, we have old houses that are often poorly built, poorly insulated, and poorly protected.  Our fire fighters are mostly volunteers.  They do an amazing job with the resources they have, but they deserve more.  The help we have when we get in trouble often comes from neighbors, rather than professionals.  More tax cuts for the people with the highest incomes won’t fix this.  Getting Democrats in Charleston to fight for better educational opportunities, better worker safety, and better trained blue collar workers building our homes will.