Aftermath: Mopping up the mess

There was Joyce Powell-Morin at Mid-Columbia Medical Center, where Nearing works, who took on the task of getting her a replacement birth certificate, which she needs to replace her driver’s license.

And the people at Revell Coy Insurance. They weren’t even her insurance company, but as Nearing’s sister, Peggy Beall, drove her around on errands while she struggled to put her life back together, they stopped in there for help.

“They not only hooked me up with Foremost Insurance and got my claim started, but they bought us pizza and fed us lunch. And this is not even my insurance office! They could tell I was pretty messed up,” she said.

That was in the early days after the fire at her home on Reservoir Road, some seven miles up Mill Creek Road. The fire, likely caused by an electrical malfunction, was called in at 11:30 p.m. Nearing and her daughter Bailey, 16, a track and cross-country standout at The Dalles High School, were in bed.

They scrambled out — “in PJs and bare feet” — taking their two dogs with them. The cats took off and returned a day later.

HELPING HANDS

After numbly watching her 1973 double-wide manufactured home — with a stick-built second story – burn for awhile, her neighbor, Alice Hilmoe, “grabbed me by the shoulder and said, “Come in. There isn’t anything you can do.’”

Nearing and her daughter have been staying with Alice and Whitey Hilmoe ever since. The insurance company is sending her a fifth-wheel trailer, which was due to arrive shortly. She’ll stay there while she rebuilds.

“Oh man, they are the most wonderful neighbors,” Nearing said. “They are from Calvary Baptist [Church] and [visiting friend] Mary [Batty]is from First Christian [Church] and I go to the Vineyard. Everybody has been so gracious to me. Ellen Turner says I’m on every prayer list in town.”

She sold half her goats the other day and got a good price for them, even though a lady at the auction house told her she was unlikely to. She prayed, asked others to do the same, and ended up being blessed, she said.

Her car keys were destroyed, so Griffith Motors brought out a dummy key to get the vehicle into neutral, then towed it to town and made her two new keys, all for free.

Loretta Ellett with Ellett Construction is paying to have four burned trees felled on the property. But Nearing wants to preserve two stumps on the east side. Maybe she can turn them into the base for a picnic table. A pragmatic person, she shrugs off the notion of having some charred stumps that could serve as a reminder of the fire.

Bill Hamilton, with “Fix it for Him,” a faith-based group that helps do small construction jobs, was with Nearing as she met the insurance adjustor. He worked in insurance himself and provided valuable input.

She was paying her home on a private contract, and the sellers have agreed to waive the August payment. “Isn’t that nice?” Nearing said. “It’s that sort of stuff, everybody coming together” that is keeping her going.

The list of helpers is so long she’s worried she’s left somebody off. She’s had offers of help “even from these old ladies that can hardly walk.”

HARD WORKER

Using vacation and sick time, Nearing has taken a month off from working as a nursing assistant at the hospital.

She’s a high-energy person, and has done a lot in the last few weeks. She lined up the builder and the electrician for her replacement home. She’s going to plumb it herself, with lots of guidance and direction. Her family had rentals when she was growing up, so home improvements are not intimidating to her.

She’s lined up the salvage guy, the well guy, and is plugging away at the list of contents in her house — every pot and pan, every towel and pillow. “How do you figure that one out?” she said.

For her lost credit cards, she doesn’t even have a number to call, so she’s waiting for her bill, to find a number, to call and ask for replacements.

DIVINE PRESENCE

On a baking hot afternoon earlier this week, Nearing surveyed the ash pile where her house once stood, telling Batty, “God was watching over me like you wouldn’t believe.”

A terra cotta angel, with a few chunks missing, sits sentry at the entrance to the property.

Behind it, a 28-by-70 concrete foundation is filled with ashes, the unscathed chimney standing starkly in the rubble. A reporter asked why the pile of ash is so much higher at the rear of the house. She explained that’s where the second story was.

With help from Whitey Hilmoe and John and Karen Roberts, Nearing piled up all the scrap metal from the fire in a corner.

She considers herself a mellow person, but she also thinks she’s hiding her emotions about the fire.

She talks matter-of-factly about the worst losses: a large piece of tatting – hand-crafted, durable lace – done by her great-great-grandmother; and the only thing she had of her father’s: his Catholic Bible.

A friend had earlier marveled at how well Nearing was handling it, but Nearing also tells about how she was “just devastated” over her losses and her sister, Lori Lindsay, finally had to tell her, “You’ve got to let it go.”

Her sister reminded her they were just things, and what really counted was that she and Bailey were safe.

She said of the piece of tatting: “It was diamond-shaped, about the size of a platter.” Each of the sisters got to pick one piece of the tatting, and “I think I had the prettiest one. Anyway, doesn’t matter anymore.”

She can say that now, but, “I just walked in circles for a long time. I’d go to do something and say, ‘Ok, what am I doing over here?’”

She said, “It’s taken me a long time to get my – not that I’m fully functional yet. I just feel God’s hand upon me the whole time. It’s been an amazing thing.

“If it wasn’t for all the wonderful people in our community, I don’t think I would be — it’s just too much. I have just been overwhelmed. It’s hard to wrap my mind around such a thing.”

Even the fact that her co-workers found out what happened to her from seeing the picture of the fire in the Chronicle or online was awful. One co-worker told her “’every single one of us was in tears.’ That’s how they found out. That’s pretty devastating.”

EXPLOSION

During the fire, an explosion occurred. Neighbors Devin and Terrie Daggett told her it shook their house.

It turned out to be one of two pressurized cylindrical tanks that formed her water system. The second tank is still standing, but its upper portion has swelled, showing it was on its way to bursting too.

The explosion shot pieces of galvanized pipe to the other side of the property.

The Daggetts not only have let Nearing use their water to feed her animals, as have other neighbors, but they put out a request on Facebook for help for them. “They’re sending gift cards and clothes. I’ve never been so thankful.”

Unbelievably, this isn’t even the first time Nearing’s been put out of her home by a fire. When she was little, maybe seven or eight, her 15-year-old sister started a fire in her room when a candle was put too close to some macramé. She tried to put the fire out by herself, but it got away from her.

Her older brother, home from Vietnam, yelled at Nearing and her sister Peggy to get out, that the house was on fire. They were in a “solid sleep” when he said this, and just went back to sleep. He came back again, saw them still in bed, and went into the room and yelled at them again. They all escaped safely and lived elsewhere for awhile while repairs were made.

But she was a kid then, and it “kind of just bounces off you and you go play.”

But this, where she has to start completely over from nothing, is “hard to fathom. It’s really difficult. When people say you never know a person’s situation until you walk in their shoes – I could never have fathomed what these sort of people go through.

“I’m so grateful everyone’s lifting me up.”