The road back home

Long after the flames are extinguished and the trucks have returned to the station, the damage caused by even a small fire can affect people in a big way.

Even things that don’t burn can be damaged by heat, smoke and the water that’s used to extinguish the flames. Recovering from a fire takes a long, long time — and a lot of patience.

“I’m bored as the devil,” said Harry Wayne Wilson, whose home on Ferguson Road in Ringgold received “moderate damage” during a fire Sept. 10. “I’d rather be out in the country and do what I want to do.”

After the fire, his insurance company put Wilson in a hotel room on Riverside Drive. But that didn’t cover Wilson’s daughter and son-in-law, Tina and Randolph Browning. They’ve been roughing it in an old storage trailer back on Ferguson Road.

“It will take a while to fix everything,” Randolph Browning said. “Even though the fire didn’t get far, there’s smoke on everything and lots of things melted from the heat. … It’s a mess. I’ve boarded up the windows, but we can’t do anything else until the insurance adjustor tells us what they are going to do.”

And that’s life after fire. Disruptions and delays go hand in hand with damage.

At this time of the year, fire departments are stressing the importance of fire safety and prevention, the use of smoke detectors and extinguishers and the importance of an evacuation plan.

The National Fire Protection Association reported nearly 400,000 house fires in this country in 2006, according to Danville Fire Marshal Shelby J. Irving. Those fires caused 2,580 deaths, 12,500 injuries and $6.8 billion in damage.

Back in Ringgold, Wilson’s family is struggling through the various problems caused by the fire.

Damage has to be evaluated, costs estimated, contractors hired and repairs made before Wilson and his family can return home.

Many others have struggled with the exact same problems after their homes burned.

During this time when fire departments work to educate the public about the dangers of fire, we can’t forget Wilson’s family and others like them that are now struggling to survive fire’s difficult, inconvenient aftermath. After reading about their plight, how can anyone believe there’s such a thing as a minor house fire?