Renter's insurance provided a base to rebuild

LACONIA — The first clue my wife and I had that something was amiss was the way our dog flew off the bed with a series of loud, serious barks. It was unlike him, especially at 12:30 a.m. on a Tuesday; in this case, Sept. 8, 2020.

I had just rolled over to go to sleep when Taco sprang into action. I sat up and immediately noticed the sound of a commotion outside on Dyer Street.

I looked out the window and saw some teenagers running up and down the street.

That wasn’t normal, but it also wasn’t unprecedented.

Then that I heard someone say “fire.” Almost as soon as that happened there was an urgent pounding on our door and a woman yelled that there was a fire and told us to get out.

I double-timed it down the stairs and my wife Janis and I went outside, taking a leashless Taco with us. We were barefoot. I had on a T-shirt and shorts and Janis was dressed only in a tank top and skort. She grabbed her purse on the way out.

We both thought we would be back inside within five minutes, ten at most. That’s how most fire alarms play out.

Except when they don’t.

When I stepped out on our small porch I saw massive flames pouring from the apartment nearest North Main Street, maybe 50 feet away. They extended out well beyond the landing of that porch and were spectacular. It was then that I heard sirens coming from the fire station just a few hundred yards away.

I realized I had forgotten my phone, so I ran back inside. I saw our little tuxedo cat, Bubby, and made a stab at scooping him up. I whiffed and he bolted. I then ran upstairs and grabbed my phone. As I passed the bathroom on the way back down I noticed faint wisps of smoke starting to accumulate near the bathroom ceiling. I didn’t hang around to watch. I double-timed the stairs again, slipped on sandals on my way out the door and went out to find Janis.

Between the two of us we had one pair of footwear, one phone and one debit card. Janis had left her phone next to the bed, and my wallet was inside. We would never see either of those items again.

What we did have was renter’s insurance.

That was totally Janis’ idea. She’s good like that, always thinking ahead and assuming the worst might happen.

In this case, her instincts were right enough. We sat on the corner and watched fire consume much of the building. At one point flames burned brightly above our two bedroom windows. Janis kept wondering aloud about Bubby.

The neighbors brought us food and water, and one kind woman brought Janis a pair of Crocs. It was acorn season, and walking barefoot over them was painful, as I learned when I loaned Janis my sandals for a bit. A firefighter – from Moultonborough, I think – lent her his jacket and the woman who provided the Crocs reappeared with a jacket for Janis and some treats and a leash for Taco.

We connected with Red Cross workers in the Middle School parking lot in the middle of the night. They gave us gift cards and toiletries, among other things.

When morning rolled around we were still at the Middle School, when I remembered it was Primary Election Day and the polls had just opened. We weren’t really dressed for it, but we entered the school to vote.

“We’ll need to see some ID,“ the nice lady at the polls told us.

“Funny thing about that,” I said, explaining that my wallet was inside the building up the street that had just burned.

David Stamps, the supervisor of the checklist in Ward 3, came over and was filled in on what happened.

“I’ll vouch for them,” he said, and I thanked him.

Voting was the first thing we did after the fire that felt normal.

We then called our insurance company, and the speed with which they pulled things together for us was not something I expected. I had visions of endless bureaucracy and getting ensnared in red tape, but it wasn’t that way at all.

Within two hours they had us booked into a hotel. We ended up staying there a month while we looked for a new place, and it was all covered by the renter’s insurance, for which we probably paid about the state average of $11 per month.

We were inundated with kindness from friends, acquaintances and total strangers who gave us gift cards, furniture, clothes and money.

More than once I was moved to tears thinking how blessed Janis and I were to be in the thoughts of people with such big hearts.

We slowly replenished much of what we lost and were reimbursed by the insurance company. Eventually we found a place – not easy in this housing market – that makes me think of the old adage about someone who “fell in a pile of manure and came out smelling like a rose.”

But having renter’s insurance gave us a physical and financial base from which to get our bearings and rebuild.

“It was worth every penny,” Janis says now.

We went back four or five times to look for the cat. The damage in the apartment – from fire, smoke, water – wasn’t as bad as that sustained by some of our neighbors, but it was bad enough. Our calls to Bubby were met with silence, and Janis was pretty distraught.

We let people know we were looking for him.

Then, about three days after the fire, someone sent us a text of a cat sitting in a window. Janis let loose with tears of joy and we headed that way. He still played hard to get, but eventually the little stinker came out and we were reunited.

Even the dog was happy to see him.