Miller Fire

This Page Upated 27 February 2010

Written by Dorothy Miller

We lost our home to fire 2/17/2009. The following is an account of what happened:

February 17th, 2009 about eleven fifteen at night, I realized our house is on fire. I was sitting in my recliner playing on my laptop. For about 10 minutes or so I heard banging and popping sounds. It didn't dawn on me what the noise was. I thought my neighbors were making all the noise. I couldn’t figure out what they might be doing at such a late time of the night. I thought maybe Chad might be doing something but he had went to bed and had been asleep for hours. So I thought I had better check on Chad. I looked in on him, but he was snoring away. So I was going to get ready for bed. I turned on the bathroom light and that’s when I realized the house was on fire. Smoke was coming out of the vents and coming down the hallway. I woke Chad and told him the house was on fire, get up and get dressed. Then I grabbed the phone and dialed 911 and Ralph and Elaine. They cam right over, and Ralph moved our golf cart down to his house, before the fire department even got there. We ran out to the front of our building, onto the street where everyone else was standing just watching the fire destroying most of the building before the fire trucks got there. There were 4 fire trucks, police cars and security guards on the scene. It took them more then two hours to put the fire out. We were then transferred to the Ayres hotel where they put us up in rooms. We were there for about three weeks or so.
Then we were placed in vacant apartments here in Leisure World. We were in this fully furnished apartment for about ten months, at 600.00 dollars a month, which isn't too bad. The man who rented to was really nice. His name is Rudy Boon. We are so grateful to him for letting us live there.
It took about eight months for all the permits and paper work before the building could start being rebuilt. And then it only took about ten weeks to rebuild. We are so happy to be back in our home again. Everything is all new and pretty and all modern and up to code. Smoke detectors and sprinkler systems are in every room.
We were lucky to be able to save most of our photos, fifty years worth, and most of our musical instruments, Chad’s guitars, and banjos, and my bass guitar and amplifier were saved. We lost thirty years of home videos, and that was the biggest loss. The only furniture that was saved was our coffee table. I can hardly believe it survived for over a month under all that rubble. It's a beautiful table.
We are all so lucky to be alive. Only one person who died was the man who lived in the apartment where the fire started. So sad for his family, his wife had passed away about two years ago of cancer. And he has three grown children, two daughters and a son. We are so glad we had homeowners insurance. The following photos were taken a few days after the fire that Ralph was able to take before the building was fenced off by the fire department. There are more. I need to scan from some our Leisure World newspaper.

The following are photos of the fire damage. New photos of the rebuilt home will be posted soon.