The Roberts' Fire
After losing one home to a tornado and a beach home to a hurricane, on the morning of October 12th, the Marc Roberts family lost their new home to fire. They safely fled the burning house, but virtually all was lost save most of the family photographs which the firefighters retrieved from a burning room.
The Roberts family shared their home with us, their Trinity family, holding many of the church outings in their splendid home on the lake with the fantastic recreational backyard.
Kim has written us a poignant letter sharing some of the details of their recovery, but, most of all displaying so much grace in her expression of thanks from the family to the Trinity family.
Dear Friends,
As all of you know, our home went up in flames at 3:35 a.m. on Oct. 12th. We barely escaped with our children. The house is a total loss. Within 30 minutes of the start of our fire, and all during the following hours as our firefighters fought the fire, all of you began to surround our family with your love & concern. Our family has never felt more loved and cared for as we have during this past week of chaos, turmoil, and fear. We felt an overwhelming desire to make sure, RIGHT NOW, that you know how much this has meant to us. We could not have borne this without our faith and the hundreds of you that have come to us! Thank you is such a tiny phrase for your overwhelming love, support, and generosity. Our hearts are broken, but you are giving us the power and strength to heal. Thank you for loving us.
Here are a few details:
- It was an electrical fire in the exterior wall of our kitchen deck. The investigators are attempting to trace the wire that caused it and why our large home so quickly became engulfed.
- The house is a total loss and must be demolished. We will rebuild on the same spot and with the same plan. Our builder, Clay Kilgore, expects it will take approximately 15 months.
- We have purchased a home in the Inverness subdivision, just a few miles from our burned home. Our new address is:
2120 Inverness Parkway
Tuscaloosa, AL, 35405
205-750-0990 (same phone)
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Your many gifts of prayers, hugs, phone calls, food, cash and gift cards, household donations, time working on some of the pictures saved, meals for our family, etc., are so very appreciated and treasured. The only way we know to thank you is for you to know we will reciprocate in kind to any others with a need the rest of our lives. Thank you, thank you, thank you!
We knew you would be anxious to have an update from our fire. I hope you know by now how deeply grateful we are for all of the love and support we have received in the weeks since our fire. Our family has been so uplifted by this that it is difficult to feel anything but a sense of peace right now! Thank you for your prayers and the care you have shown all of us.
Due to a project overload, we had to change to Hunter Plott as our builder. He is just as fabulous & already has us well onto the path of recovery. The house was demolished on Nov. 10t" & 11t". It was hard to believe that it took us 2 years to build our home and only 2 days to bring it down! We turned the first day into a fun event for our family with many of our friends included. The kids were allowed to run around and throw bricks into the few remaining windows and listen to them crash down. That was fun (and therapeutic)!!!! We then watched the big equipment move in and begin to crunch up our house. It was really a relief to see the burned shell removed. Kristina and I had developed asthma as a result of entering and reentering the house & sifting through the debris. We're doing much better with our new medications, and with the house gone we can't go inside anymore! All that now remains of the house is a basement. As I write this letter, the refraining has begun! We are so excited! Our builder hopes to have us home by the middle of this summer!
Our insurance paid for an independent fire-engineering firm to come in and investigate the cause of our fire. The state of Ala. had listed the cause of the fire as our grill. We knew this just could not be possible since we had not used the grill in the 6 weeks prior to the fire. These engineers came in for a week and pulled wires from anywhere walls remained. They were able to determine that the fire was electrical. They found 4 wires in various places in our house that arced for unknown reasons. The fire broke out on the outside wall behind our kitchen, over the kitchen deck. The precautions we had taken when building - fire retardant sheetrock, insulation, & carpeting - actually made our fire worse. The insulation kept the fire from entering our kitchen. If it had been able to breach the interior walls, our fire alarms would have gone off instantly & alerted us to the fire before it spread too far. Instead, the fire was unable to initially enter the interior & it spread, instead, up the exterior of the house and into our attic. The insulation in the attic prevented the smoke and fire from penetrating the house & that's why alarms did not go off. We were all sleeping soundly while our house was quietly burning above our heads (at least 45 minutes)! By the time we awakened, the roof was minutes away from collapsing into the upstairs where Kristina and William were sleeping! I still get chill bumps every time I think about this! They cautioned us not to jump to the conclusion that the preventative measures that cost us extra money did no good. They reminded us that 90% of fires begin inside a house and these measures would have helped to prevent major damage. They were unable to determine why these wires arced because the damage to our home was so extensive. However, when we told them about our squirrel incident, they felt it could be the cause. Two weeks prior to our fire, a squirrel got into the transformer on our street & knocked out the power to all three homes. They suspect that when the squirrel was electrocuted (we had found its fried body), it may have caused a surge inside our house that damaged something. During those next two weeks the damage may have continued and ultimately caused a fire. It's a little frightening to think that a squirrel could have caused thisl William received a B.B. gun last Christmas, but he was always warned to NEVER shoot at any of our little woodland friends. We've given him free rein on squirrels now! The good news is that we are NOT at fault for the fire - thank goodness! Our insurance has assured us that our rates will not go up and we will not be dropped. Met Life is an awesome company!
We will never be able to thank the many hundreds of you that stepped forward in the weeks following our fire to offer us support in so many ways. We have felt so very loved and cared for, & this made it possible for us to bear this horrible tragedy. This has given us the strength to move forward & know how truly blessed our family is. This will be a Christmas we will forever remember because we have so much to be thankful for.
Next December we are planning to have a "Blessing of the Home" ceremony. We hope all of you will join us in this celebration. You are the reason we can move forward with such peace and joy, so please plan on celebrating with us next year! We hope your family will also have a blessed Christmas season. Try to slow down & listen to the joy in your children's voices, watch the lights, & enjoy the crowds. It truly is an exciting time of year to recommit your life to Christ.
God Bless You!
Marc & Kim
Melissa, Amy, Amanda, Kristina, William
Front of house -- just after the fire
Rear view -- just after the fire
Demolition day -- bringing down the bedroom wing
In front of our new and temporary home.