Almost unimaginable grief
This story is horrific:
A [mother] climbed onto the roof of her burning house and tried to smash the windows of her daughters’ bedrooms in a bid to save them from the flames ravaging her home.
Madonna Badger, 47, and friend Michael Borcina survived the horrific Christmas day fire at her Stamford, Connecticut home that claimed the lives of her three daughters and their grandparents.
Lily, 10, and seven-year-old twins Sarah and Grace perished in the 5 a.m. fire with Mrs Badger’s parents, Lomer and Pauline Johnson, who were to celebrate their 49th wedding anniversary today.
Ms. Badger is a wealthy executive, as many articles are eager to point out, and the house was a huge and expensive waterfront Victorian she’d bought a year ago for almost two million dollars. Her father had just finished a stint as department store Santa at Saks; he really looked the part (go to the article to see the photos), natural white beard and all.
There are strange anomalies about the situation, which have caused a lot of gossipy speculation in comments sections of newspaper reports on the fire. For example, Borcina was the contractor in charge of renovating the home, and was overnight staying there (I’m not going to get into these aspects of the tragedy, but I note them).
To me the most important question involves the fire itself. By all reports, it swept through the mansion incredibly quickly. In this day and age of smoke detectors, we like to think that horrific events like this can be avoided through technology. What went wrong here? Were there no smoke detectors in a house of the magnitude? Were they disabled because of the ongoing renovations? Or were they overwhelmed by the ferocity of a Christmas tree fire?
Home fires that start with Christmas trees tend to be more deadly than typical home fires. A recent study by the National Fire Prevention Association found that one in 18 home Christmas tree fires from 2005 to 2009 resulted in a death, compared with one in every 141 home fires.
“A Christmas tree fire is a fairly uncommon occurrence, but when it does occur, it can be particularly serious and more deadly than another type of house fire,” spokesperson Lorraine Carli says.
Trees provide an unusually large amount of fuel, and the fire can spread through a room in seconds, leaving little time to get out of the house, says Tom Olshanski of the U.S. Fire Administration. That’s especially true if the fires happen when people are sleeping, he says.
The key to prevention is to water the tree well and to turn off the lights when you go to sleep.
Whatever the cause of the fire, I cannot imagine that Ms. Badger will ever recover, except physically. Nor will her estranged husband. Even the firefighters seem to have been traumatized. The deepest desire is to go in and save the victims. And yet the knowledge that, if you do, you not only stand a good chance of not surviving, but you will not survive and your life will be forfeited in vain, is enough to stop virtually anyone. But the guilt can be tremendous, as well as the grief.
If you’re the praying type, please say a few prayers for this family.
Several years ago two houses in Island Heights, NJ burnt to the ground in minutes at Christmas time: they were renovated Victorians also. The post-fire analysis was that the wood ni the houses were so old and dry that the fire just fed off it.
There’s a saying about “burns like a shingle factory”. Wood’s been dry for a century, at least. In the last thirty years, at least, even the humidity has been controlled.
One year long ago I was at a friends house and we went to start a bonfire in their back yard. Poking around the edge of the woods, we found a pile of 10 or more old Christmas trees that had been discarded there over the course of the years. We thought they might make good kindling, so we piled them up as the base of the fire and lit them. The combination of the huge surface area of the needles and fine branches and the flammable pine oil in the wood created an enormous fireball; they all burned into ash in seconds, and the heat drove us running from the firepit. I’ll never forget that. What a horrible disaster from something that might at first glance seem completely innocuous.
Horrid things happen, and often happen to really nice people, and even nice people occasionally get frisky with the contractor (else a half-million mystery-romance novels lie). But we owe it to ourselves, and to these victims, to ask
Not to make light of this tragedy, but it reminded me of what a local talk radio host said a few years ago:
“Take a dead tree, drag it into your living room, stick it in a bucket of water, and wrap it with electrical wires. What could possibly go wrong?”
I used to love live Christmas trees when I was a kid (and had no responsibility for installing and maintaining them), but now I just have a small artificial tree.
Driving home from work one night, I saw a house fire.
Someone said there was still a kid inside. I knew the layout of the house (a ranch like mine). The blaze was in the living room.
I took a chair and busted the master bedroom window to go in. Black smoke billowed out like a solid mass.
I couldn’t bring myself to go in.
When the firemen arrived a few minutes later, they found the kid in that room, on the floor.
The window open had allowed air to rise off the floor, but he still died hours later, from smoke inhalation.
I don’t know what else I could have done.
I’m a firefighter, Ed. Be easy on yourself. You did what you could. Without SCBA, and maybe with it, the smoke would have taken you too. Sprinklers can help if a fire gets going but you almost never see them in residential construction. If the smoke detectors don’t get you out early, it’s hard to survive. At peak energy release a fully involved single-family house can top out at 2 GW. I worked with my kids on evac plans. Nothing ever happened and they’re grown now, but I wish I’d worked with them even more.
A note on fire detectors:
Code dictates where they go, and need to be in place for the final inspection. Assume there is a law in place there to have operational detectors at the time of sale (probably), they may not have been active during the renovation itself.
Smoke detectors come with a plastic dust cover that prevents the alarm from going off because of dust. During our renovation, we kept these dust covers on until all the spackling and sanding had been done, which for us was post-renovation since we were doing the painting. The fire department just wanted to make sure they were installed correctly and that we understood what those dust covers meant.
Not saying that this had anything to do with the fire here, but just to point out that the best systems in the world always have a human element in them that can keep them from being useful.
Having said that, when was the last time anyone checked their own smoke detectors and carbon monoxide detectors? If you haven’t done so in six months, do so now.
Unfortunately – Victorians are prone to fire – it’s the way they are built, not the materials but the structure. It creates a central firestorm. Which is why when many Victorians catch fire – they burn to the ground quickly and are completely destroyed.
Terribly sad about this family.
About 10 years ago, my aunt’s house burned to the ground so quickly that she and my uncle got out in only their night clothes. That week, I bought escape ladders for the upstairs bedrooms. We keep them under the beds, along with a backpack to carry the dog. My son is a Scout and we also go over fire escape plans every year. I like to think all of this will keep my family safe, but stories like this make me acknowledge that systems fail every day. I can’t imagine the parents’ grief.
Twenty years ago we were living on Horsehead bay in Gig Harbor, WA. It was just getting dark when the house directly across the bay caught on fire. It was a small blaze at first, but by the time I had called 911 the entire house was engulfed. It was about three miles by road around the bay to where the house was. I jumped in the car and drove around to see if I could direct the firemen. They were just arriving as I drove up. By the time they began pumping water it was no longer a question of saving the house. It was a matter of trying to keep the fire from spreading to the forest and nearby houses. Could.Not.Believe.How.Fast It.Burned. Smoke detectors are a help, but a plan must be in place because time is of the essence. Fortunately, there was no one home, so there were no casualties.
My prayers go out to this family. As a bereaved parent I have personal knowledge of their grief. They will need all their strength and faith as well as the help and encouragement of others just to continue some semblance of their daily life for months, if not years. The death of a child is a crushing blow. Losing three and your parents so suddenly is so much worse. I pray that they find the path to solace and healing.