When Paul and Sheila Tipping's home in Upper Manor Estates burned to the ground July 29, 2012, there was so much chaos, emotion and fear that neither they nor their four children quite knew what to do.
Now after a year's passage of time, they are slowly moving on. Like a phoenix, their new house, built over the ashes on the site of the old one, is rising, but it is still under construction. They hope to move into it in mid-November. They have no new furniture yet, and they are still very much in transition, but as Sheila points out, acquiring new possessions is one thing. Dealing with the loss is something each family member had to come to terms with in their own way.
"We were in different stages. The kids probably mourned their loss early and two of our children, our girls, went on a trip. Paul was busy with insurance and I was in the present getting clothing, getting cutlery," she said, leaving the countless list of all the things the family needed, hanging.
"I think we had 18 lined pages of things at one point," she said.
The exact cause of the fire will never be known for sure, Paul said, but it is believed to have been started by lightning, which struck the chimney early in the afternoon and probably smouldered all day until someone – likely a neighbour – called 911 at 11:35 p.m.
When the storm hit at around noon, Paul was out cutting the grass and heard the crack of thunder. He hurried inside, thinking the strike was too close for comfort, but believing nothing was wrong, headed out to work.
The next time he saw his house, flames were coming out of the window.
"Sheila was at the lake with our youngest son. One of our daughters was in New Zealand and our kids (teens) were out. I came home from work and the road was blocked off so I went around the other way and as I got near the house, I could see sparks before I could see the house. Then I came around the corner, and flames were coming out of every window in the house," he recalled.
Their children found out quickly through a network of phone calls and Facebook messages of all things, and Paul had to let Sheila know via a neighbour, because her cellphone didn't work at the lake.
"A neighbour came to tell me the house was on fire and at first, I didn't believe her," Sheila said, adding that the shock she felt didn't lessen for nearly a week.
Paul managed things clearly and carefully and identified himself to the firefighters as the owner of the house. But he believes he too was in shock because he remembers telling the firemen that their truck was ruining the grass in front of the house. Yet all the while, the house was burning, and the grass was the least of his worries.
Sheila didn't see the devastation until the next day.
"When I came home the next day, it was still smoking," she said.
The Tippings stayed in a motel for two weeks until their brother-in-law found them a rental home in Erin Ridge.
"I didn't realize the significance of the name at first, but the street where we stayed is Ember Crescent. Now I get shivers when I think about it," said Sheila.
Sturgeon County school trustee Wendy Miller led the drive to get the family clothing, towels, bedding, dishes and even furniture so they could live as comfortably as possible in their temporary home.
"She kept asking me what we needed and she even got hold of the schools my kids attended and asked everyone to contribute photos so that we had pictures of our children. My sister and other family members gave us photos of our wedding," Sheila said.
Everything they owned was gone, including their clothing and sadly all their mementoes, including thousands of photo images stored on the computer. Sheila's jewelry was gone and even though they knew where it had been, and Paul searched for hours trying to find it, nothing remained.
"The only thing I found was an exemplary service award I'd been given. We've been married 25 years and together 28 and all our keepsakes and even before that, all our awards for winning races, our school things and our children's things, were all gone," Paul said as he explained that they had lived in their 20-year-old house for 12 years.
The Tippings had a “fireproof” safety box, where they stored all their important paperwork and documents. Everything inside it burned.
"It was supposedly safe to 2,000 degrees but (firefighters) figure the heat was at over 2,000 degrees for over five hours. Everything in our freezer burned," Paul said.
Previously, for insurance purposes, Paul had taken videos of his home and he was organized, having saved and catalogued every receipt.
"People do that so they are protected if there is a theft. But we had a fire and lost all our records," he said, stressing that if a paper or valuables are so important that it seems they should be protected, then they should be in a safety deposit box, away from your home.
"Or take the document to work and store a copy there. It's so simple to scan things and save them elsewhere. And be diligent about reading your insurance policy. Never simply assume the insurance company is right. Check everything," he said.
At first, Sheila could barely bring herself to visit the site of her home and except for one visit with insurance appraisers the Monday after the fire, she didn't return for a month.
"The insurance appraisers told us that we had two choices: to walk and to lose everything except the value of the lot, or to rebuild," Paul said.
Finding a way of rebuilding wasn't easy, but they couldn't afford to do anything else.
"The kids were set against moving back," Sheila said, adding that Christmas was especially emotional for everyone.
"The kids lost their little handprints that they made for me in clay in school. So they got together and each of them made me new handprints and footprints and that's the only art we have hanging up in our rented house," she said.
Despite their emotions, the decision to rebuild was made and by January, after most of the insurance debates and hassles were over, construction began.
The house will be slightly smaller than their old one and will be completely different in every way, so there are no echoes of what's gone. Even the living room, which used to face the road, will now face towards the view of the Tipping's back yard.
"And I am going to have a real walk-in pantry with room for a freezer on the main floor," said Sheila.
Sheila still has trouble with electrical storms and some of the fears will likely remain with her for a long time.
"I still can't light candles. I'm leery. We've changed," she said.
What sustains her is the memory of all the people who helped so much.
"People pulled together for us and without that, we'd probably still be stumbling around. But our friends, our family and even people we didn't know that well, all came together and helped us. That, and being together in this. Paul and I helped each other a lot," she said.
Paul agreed but as he looked around at the still bare rafters of his new house, he couldn't help but be nostalgic too.
"It's odd. People say to me, 'Oh you get a new house out of this'. But until you go through it you cannot understand what you've lost. I'd take the old house and all those memories back in a minute," he said.
"We're moving forward. And without our family, our friends and the community, we'd probably still be in a cloud.”
