Hope from ashes

The air has a pungent smell of ash. Dark streaks rise along the walls. Debris covers the floor and countertops. Soot envelopes everything else, from broken windowpanes, to tin cans, to door knobs, to the charred and twisted remains of melted appliances.

This ominous scene is the home of Keith and Sue Baker. Their home caught fire, along with the home of Rosemary Coupe, on June 19 after winds blew flames from a children’s fort in Coupe’s back yard to a shed, which in turn burned Baker’s home. Shawn Emmett, the Plains Police Chief, said that despite rumors circulating about a candle inside the fort starting the fire, officially, there is still no hard evidence about how the flames started.

The Baker’s son Andrew, age 16, was the only one home at the time. Sue said that when he saw the fire he immediately left the house to see Chief Emmett of the Plains City Fire Department arrive. Andrew helped Emmett find their hose to begin dousing the fire. Their other two boys Jon, age 14, and Aaron, age 11, were swimming at the time.

While more than a month has passed since the fire, for the Bakers, the experience is still intensely vivid.

“In ten minutes everything was gone,” Sue said. “I went in the house and tried to get some stuff out of the bedroom and the door window blew off into the bedroom and flames came shooting inside.”

Sue said she was only able to recover her purse, their wedding album and one other family photo album before fire consumed the house. Since Aaron and Jon were swimming at the time, they were only left with what they brought with them to the swimming pool. Sue said that Jon didn’t even have shoes after the fire.

“It was hard to think, I couldn’t even think straight,” Sue said, remembering her first reactions. “It looked like somebody had set a bomb off from the inside.”

“It’s kind of a funny feeling,” Keith explained. “First off, you’re just kind of in limbo, you’re in no man’s land. You don’t have any money because the insurance hasn’t come through and you don’t know what you’re going to do.”

After the Bakers recovered from their initial shock they said that they were left with a deep sense of gratitude that there were no injuries and that there family was safe.

“Nobody got hurt, that would have been tough to deal with, that would have been real tough to deal with,” Keith said. “Real tragedies are when you lose people, when you lose your stuff, you just have to get back on your feet and get going.”

The Bakers were also grateful for the support they received from the community. They said that they were surprised at how quickly friends, family and people around the community offered to help out. Sue said that they were offered food, money and even small things such as toothpaste.

Local businesses even helped out. The Sunset Hills Funeral Home collected household items and clothing for the two families and Rocky Mountain Bank set up and account for donations.

“We’re just so grateful for the friendships we have and the relationships we have and that’s what carried us through,” Sue said. “We’ve always loved this town and the community and it’s always had a warm feeling for us.”

During the first couple of weeks, the Bakers said their friends and family helped dig through the home to see what they could salvage. And Russell Baker, Keith’s brother allowed the family to live with them until they could get into their new house.

Once basic needs were met and their insurance company started compensating them for their losses, the Bakers purchased a home just off of Lower Lynch Road in Plains, only a few miles from their old house.

“Once that stuff started coming together then we felt like we could do something. You can actually plan, you can actually start working on something.,” Keith said. He explained that now they are beginning the long and arduous task of purchasing new things for the house.

“If anybody thinks it’s fun to go shopping they ought to try doing it for a whole house. It will cure you of shopping,” Sue said jokingly. “It’s very stressful.” She added that the family has been making many trips back and forth to Missoula to replace furniture, clothing and other basic essentials.

“The hardest thing for me was losing all of the stuff I made because I remodeled that house myself and built the kitchen cabinets from scratch,” Keith said. And when he says “from scratch,” Sue explained that for much of the furniture in their old house her husband had actually cut the individual trees down to get the wood.

“It’s worth more than if you just bought [the furniture]. It might not be worth more to somebody else, but it’s worth more to you because you made that thing,” Keith said.

The Bakers said that, at times, they’ll find themselves looking for items in their house they forget have been lost in the fire. “We’re always looking around for things,” Keith said. He says that he remembers searching for things as common as a screwdriver or a crowbar and then having to borrow the tool from a neighbor.

Sue said that it was hard losing things such as family photos and videos. “We lost all of our family videos of the kids growing up and walking their first steps,” Sue said.

Another result of the fire is that the Bakers view things from a different perspective.

“I find myself being jumpy,” Keith said. Before the fire he said that he would never think of things like the potential flammability of an object or what type of smoke alarms they had. Now, he says those thoughts are on his mind more often.

Sue said that even there kids will look at things from the viewpoint of fire safety. She remembered how, when the family was driving in their car running errands, seeing a shed that was close to home and her boys pointing to it and telling her that it was built way too close.

Despite the hardships the Bakers say that they’ve allowed the experience to build them up as a family.

“Out of all of this we just have a real grateful attitude. We just see so much that’s good, just all the friends that come forward with just a little extra.” Sue said.

Keith’s perspective mirrored his wife’s. “I guess you just have a development of closeness to people that’s probably closer now than it was before,” Keith said and described his feelings of being less attached to things and more attached his family and friends.

“It’s shocking at first, but then you get your wits about you and get your attitude adjusted,” Keith said. “You just get on with life.”