Making things happen

... with integrity

Monday November 17, 2003 Volume V Number 48

When I walked up to the site, I felt something like an intruder.   This was private property.  The sign said, “No reporters.”   Over my shoulder attached to a strap, I carried a camera.  Just a few days before, in a storm of raging fire, a woman died here. 

More than ten years ago, along with her husband, Nancy took on the challenge of the wide open country.  She found the perfect place to breed her horses and raise her two children.  The fire that night exploded up the hillside and into the ravine on either side of the house at two o'clock in the morning, consuming Nancy’s idyllic world.  Nancy and her husband Steve engaged the battle together; out of a deep sleep, her to evacuate and rescue the horses; him to protect the house - a log cabin structure with a magnificent view, a dramatic view of the valley below.  Now the charred decks look out on a panorama of ash and blackened branches, stripped clean of any sign of foliage.  Hot spots still smoldered. 

While Steve battled blazes all around the house between two and five in the morning, Nancy frantically corralled her Arabians.  She hitched up the trailer as her horses bucked and whinnied in fear. 

The neighbors' home was lost, but this week, after the calamity passed, they came back to visit Steve, now a reluctant widower.  They told him something he would otherwise not have known about his Nancy.  Before she completed loading the horses, she ran down the smoky driveway, up Yellow Brick Road and banged on the door of the house across the way and implored her neighbors to evacuate immediately which they did.  Today, they told Steve, they firmly believe that her warning saved their lives.

By the time Nancy returned, the horses jumped and kicked, but quieted down to the comforting sound of her voice.  She led them into the trailer.  She made more than one trip.  No one knows for sure what happened next.  The flames and wind and firestorm whirled around the barn as she fired up the engine, revving the motor, pulling the shifter into place.  The truck pulled hard under the load, and the smoke blinded her way; virtually no visibility ahead.  She turned away from the steel barn, but the familiar unpaved drive up and around and out to the road was invisible, lost in the soot and flames and airborne debris, sparks swirling helter-skelter and by some awful quirk, a fateful miscalculation, Nancy and her vehicle went over the edge and down the steep ravine, into smoke and ash and flames all around, and the sound of scraping, crunching metal.

As Steve fought the flames around the house, he fully believed his wife Nancy had escaped the terrible inferno.  But she had not.  As daylight broke, her body was found on the steep slope, outside the truck, half way up the hill.

"A terrible way to die," Steve told me later, still in shock.

"A terrible way to die," I repeated back.  And the sadness overwhelmed me.

 * * * * * *

Her beloved barn stood for nearly two weeks afterward, twisted metal against the blackened hills, where Nancy tended to her horses.  Steve told us that it was her favorite place.  A refuge.  Her animals celebrated her presence there.  And now it stood as a charred, crumpled monument to a frightful loss.

I left Carolyn and Jamie in the car as I approached.  This was my second visit.  Up the driveway to the house, two Golden Retrievers bounded playfully toward me and behind them a man under a cap wearing a trim white beard and his daughter were walking this way.  It was Nancy’s husband, Steve.

“I’m so sorry for your loss,” I said, reaching out with a handshake and knowing full well the complete emptiness of that familiar phrase at a time like this.

“Thank you,” he replied, with pained smile and a look that said he meant it.

* * * * * *

Life goes on most everywhere else, but for Southern Californians affected by the proliferation of fires on that terrifying October weekend the catastrophe continues to dominate the landscape.

Altogether, the fires consumed three quarters of a million acres, or one thousand one hundred and fifty-six square miles - just more than the entire State of Rhode Island.  Some thirteen thousand fire-fighters courageously battled the flames, with painfully inadequate resources.  Three thousand six hundred homes perished in the out-of-control flames, and twenty-two people died – most of them in a frantic flight away from the high speed advance of the flames.

Two of those fatalities (there still could be more, as several lay in hospital rooms suffering horrifying burns teetering right on the brink) occurred within minutes of our church structure, which nearly went up in smoke.

One was Nancy Morphew.  The other was a teenager named Ashleigh, and it happened just behind the Fire Station, where she frequently dropped off a warm batch of cookies for fire-fighters, fresh from her mom’s kitchen.  Later that same morning that Nancy died, just before the flames climbed up the gully and surrounded the church, the Paradise Fire chased Ashleigh and her sister and brother up the hill as they frantically attempted an escape from their hillside home which stood on a knoll right in the path of the flames.  In the panic and blinding smoke, their vehicle struck a tree, triggering both airbags and halting their get away.  As the flames advanced, Ashleigh’s sister and brother got out of the burning car.

But Ashleigh did not. 

Ashleigh’s sister Allyson is still alive.  Barely.  Serious burns cover eighty-five percent of her body.

* * * * * *

Dan is a colleague and co-worker with Ashleigh’s father.  He has two teen-age daughters of his own.  The tragic story of Ashleigh, the grievous loss to her parents and her family and friends, well, it touched Dan - deeply.  He wanted to do something significant – something of substance.  He couldn’t sleep at night.  He had to act.

Our guys now call him Captain Dan.

Dan told his wife he was going to the town meeting at the Middle School.  He had accumulated sick days, and now was the time to take them, he told her.  He cornered a couple of local politicians in the Auditorium in a meeting filled with speeches and questions from the press and inquiries from victims all wondering how the government would respond to the crisis.  Dan offered to volunteer his skills as a contract analyst and insurance specialist to assist victims in negotiating settlements and engaging the services of contractors to clean up and rebuild. 

None accepted Dan’s generous offer.  In fact, they snubbed him.

It was in the parking lot afterwards that Pastor Bill stopped Dan.  Bill recognized the logo on the door of Dan’s truck, same company as Ashleigh’s dad’s.  Bill introduced himself. 

They got to talking.  Bill told Dan about a crew of guys who had plans to go off to a mountain conference center for a retreat.  But after the fire, they decided to stay in town, and offer assistance: repair, clean-up and erosion control.  Things like that.

Dan’s eyes widened.  Wow, he said, do you guys need some help?

“Are you kiddin’?” Bill smiled.

That was the start. 

Bill and Dan spent the next week together.  Pastor Bill, also a Chaplain with the County Sheriff’s Department, knew the neighborhood.  Dan knew construction and landscaping and the issues of drainage and erosion.  Together they developed a plan.   They contacted homeowners whose properties were vulnerable.  They put together a list of materials and equipment needed.  They recruited a crew of volunteers – team leaders, equipment operators, vendors who contributed everything from dump-trucks to Subway sandwiches.

Last week, I told you about a visit from Mariners Church.  They wanted to send immediate assistance to victims of the fires in Southern California.  Pastor Eric Heard came by on Friday afternoon with an advance team.  They interviewed Dan and Bill, took a tour of the devastation near the church, listened as the plan for a weekend of work unfolded.  They handed Bill a generous check on the spot.  And then promised more.

It was that gesture that gave Captain Dan the confidence to order up three eighteen-wheeler haulers, and contact the local land-fill.  He believed he had the money to pay the transfer (dump) fees.  By faith, Captain Dan took on the biggest project of the day.

We all agreed.

It was the right thing to do.

* * * * * *

DeFalco’s team geared up with heavy equipment, welding torches, power saws with blades to cut through steel.

At first, Steve was guarded.  He’s always been self-sufficient.  Self-reliant.  He was married to a woman who carried much more than her own share of the work load.  Together they created a life most people only dream about.  They built their custom log-cabin style country home themselves.  They designed the landscaping.  They carved riding rings into the hillsides around their property where they regularly worked their horses.  There wasn’t much time for lolly-gagging; and the notion of depending on someone else to step in – well, it just wasn’t in Steve’s vocabulary to appeal for help.

But Chaplain Bill and Captain Dan dropped by, and dropped by again.  Just checking in.  “Anything we can do?”  And then, they told Steve that a group of men cancelled plans to escape to the mountains and committed a full Saturday to offer assistance to neighbors and friends who suffered loss from the fires.  Finally Steve admitted, “You know that steel barn…”  Of course the guys knew.  It contained feed and bales of alfalfa stacked high.  The fire burned so hot the night Nancy died that it turned the strong steel girders and rails to molten metal.  The integrity of the structure gave way to the heavy roof, and folded into itself, collapsing into a mass of twisted metal.  “That was Nancy’s most favorite place in the whole world,” Steve explained.  The guys nodded.  “I don’t know what I’m going to do with it.   I checked my policies, and insurance won’t cover it.”

Bill looked over to Dan.  And Dan back at Bill.

“Every time I see that crumpled up old building, I think of her…”

Pause.

“You guys think you can do something with it?”

A tall order.

On the way back to the church, the two men agreed.  This is something we need to do.  But how?  It’s going to take some serious money.  Serious man power.  Serious machinery.

By Friday afternoon, by God’s good grace and the generosity of His people, it all came together.

The Mariners encouragement and commitment got Captain Dan on the phone, ordering up the materials.

Rick DeFalco called his guys together early Saturday morning, out from a group of nearly a hundred men.  His crew had been chosen for the heavy lifting.  They were ready to roll.

And roll they did.

* * * * * *

So when I appeared on the property with my camera last Sunday afternoon feeling like an intruder, Steve and his daughter Micaela and their two Golden Retrievers walked out to meet me.  The day after DeFalco and his team arrived, the only trace left was a concrete pad, swept and cleaned up; no evidence of the disfigured steel barn that once stood there.

The guardedness that characterized Steve early on was gone.  We spoke about his extraordinary wife.  He affirmed his love for her.  A soft spoken, quiet man, Steve shared more of the detail about how she died that awful night, snatched from him with such awful ferocity.  Micaela listened as her father spoke from the heart; we all three wept together beside the site of a barn that Nancy loved.

And then he talked about those men (DeFalco’s crew) who came from no-where; determined, hard-working men who seemed to understand the tragedy of Nancy’s death, and the loss to the family and the community, and somehow, came willing to sacrifice and give.

I know those men.  I know from whence the love came.

And now, Steve and Micaela know them, too.

* * * * * *

It’s Monday morning.  You are a leader.

Nothing inspires giving like the sudden onset of a profound loss.  For us it’s more than property.  The two fatalities in our town are more than statistics.  Even the word “fatality” has an institutional quality to it – belonging to the realm of numbers in print; sterilized labels that make the discussion a little less weighty.  But these are real people – Nancy and Ashleigh.  And Allyson remains in a carefully monitored coma – with an uncertain future.

And we are left behind, hurting but whole.  Drawing fresh air with ease.  Healthy.  Strong.  The day is ours.

These stories, each in their own way have unleashed a flood of goodwill and generosity and kindness and inclusion.  You can feel it, too.

By entering in, on this first morning of the work week, you’ve been touched as we have: by Steve’s tenderness.  By Captain Dan’s courage and foresight.  By Pastor Bill’s sensitivity and determination.  By DeFalco and his team’s true grit.  By Nancy’s memory.  By Ashleigh’s promise; extinguished in the flames.  By Allyson’s battle – for life, and then healing.

Brings today’s to-do list into a new kind of focus, huh?

All of it, a gift from the Giver of every good and perfect gift.

The Father of Lights.

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