Up in Flames

Hey y'all, on this season of Mr. Stillman's Opus, I'm spending some time interviewing my clients here at Rosewood Wealth Management. Over the years I've had the chance to work with a lot of different people and a lot of them have really interesting stories to tell.

Maybe they have a really neat job, maybe they've accomplished something very impressive, or maybe they've just had things happen to them in life, good or bad, that make for interesting stories. Today I'm talking with Gary and Nancy Willeford. They came by to talk about their experience of having their house burned down. Their son had a cooking accident in the kitchen of their relatively new home in Oxford, North Carolina, and a fire started that caused essentially a total loss of the home and everything they owned. They were kind enough to share their story of the immediate aftermath of the fire, navigating insurance claims and the rebuilding process, as well as Gary's lingering anxiety issues from the ordeal.

And they have some great tips for actions that you can take now to make life easier for you in the event that one day you find yourself as one of the unlikely one out of roughly 300 Americans that lose your home to a fire. So here's my conversation with Gary and Nancy. So guys, just walk me through that day. You wake up and it's just like any other day. And by the end of the day, life has changed pretty substantially. So walk me through the events of that day. Well, I had eaten lunch at the lake.

It was beautiful sitting at the lake. And I was just thanking God for how many blessings we had. And I got back to work and my brother-in-law called and said, Nancy, is AJ at home? I said, well, yeah, but he's probably asleep. He works there too. And he said, well, I was just hearing the somebody in the inspections department called and said that he just heard something about our address.

We have the same physical address. And so I tried to call AJ and couldn't get him. And so I got in the car and went home. He said that it was a fire call.

And so I tried to dial him all the way home and I never dialed on the cell phone. So I knew before I got there that it was our house. And you drive up and there's flashing lights everywhere and the fire trucks are there. And I walk up the driveway and my son is sitting in the driveway and just just crying. And I said, AJ, are you hurt? No.

So then don't worry about it. And so you know, they were just rolling all the hoses out. They put out the fire. It really wasn't a tremendous I mean, it was very hot fire, but it didn't burn the house to the ground.

So it's just really black inside. I called Gary and I called my other son at work and went inside to get the paperwork. Thankfully, still could go inside and get the paperwork for the insurance company and call the insurance company. And you know, from there, the insurance, you know, the guy who's the head of the insurance company in our county was on his way to Raleigh.

So stopped by and, you know, called his, you know, the first person you see and she came by and I guess Gary was home by that point. My brother in law stayed with me through the whole thing. And it's just like, it's surreal.

You know, you can't, you know, you can't stay there. We went next door to my sister and her husband's house and they fed us dinner and then we went to Walmart. You're standing in Walmart like what you own is what you've got on or what you had in your car that day. So you're buying enough to, you know, sleep that night, toiletries, you know, pillows for the bed and, you know, enough clothes to last a couple of days. And then we went to a hotel that night. I remember sitting in the hotel just, I got to find somewhere to live because I knew he's already been through a fire one time before and he was panicked about where we're going to live. So I actually pretty much found us an apartment in Crete more before, you know, that was going to be available before we went to sleep that night.

So Gary, I didn't realize this. You'd been through a fire before. When was that? I was about 10 years old and it was the, it was very, very similar. It was, it was basically the shell of the house was intact, but everything inside the house was extensive heat, smoke damage so that everything was ruined. Nothing was salvageable.

What were you able to salvage? I mean, I'm sure you were able to grab at least a couple of things out of there. You know, my iPad was under the covers of my bed. Our bedroom was kind of the farthest thing in the house. If I had some clothes that were out of season that were in boxes and they were salvageable, they took them to the cleaners, but anything that was open had soot all over it. So, I mean, even our closets, we sound strange. We don't have closet doors.

We have a very small house. So all our clothes had soot all over them. So none of that was salvageable.

So there was nothing really, wasn't anything salvageable. So you find a hotel, we're going through Maslow's hierarchy of needs, right? So let's first get shelter taken care of and what are we going to eat? I mean, what are sort of the next steps?

What, what has to happen first? Well, we did go to a rental agency the next morning and see if there were houses available there. You know, there was a house available and Henderson was like, you know, we weren't willing to go that far. And the apartment that was available was only a two bedroom apartment.

There's four of us, but the only other thing that was going to be available is going to be a month down the road. So, you know, we, we scarfed up the two bedroom apartment as fast as we could, just so we would know we had somewhere to live. And it was relatively close to where our house was. We knew we were going to have to be close to the house for the rebuilding process. And I guess the next day we met, the adjuster came out and looked at the house, right?

Well, fuzzy on that was the next day or the day after. But yeah, I mean, it's, well, one thing I did the night because I was in the construction business anyway. You know, they want to pull the plug, you know, pull the power on your house.

I called the electrician who did our house and he came over and turned everything off so that the electrical company did not actually pull the plug entirely from the house. And he actually said that anously, whatever you do, don't let them come in here and spray these walls down and say, it's okay to live in again, tell them they have to gut the house. So the lady who, the first lady who came from insurance company the first night gave us a couple of names of reconstruction companies. And she said, for this company, even, even if I had to wait, I would wait for them.

And so he might have been the first one we saw the next day. And he went through the house and basically said, yeah, we're just going to gut it, you know, back to the stud walls. By gutting, I mean, it means everything's off the floor, all the sheetrock is off, all the ceiling overhead. When you stand in the house after it's gutted, all you see is the underside of the roof. And the stud walls.

The rafters and the stud walls. I mean, even, I mean, they even, you know, tore the toilets out. I mean, the only thing that was left other than the stud walls was our fiberglass shower that they did clean and reuse. So what were the things, I mean, obviously most of it is just stuff that's replaceable. What were the things that weren't replaceable that you lost? Well, pictures, obviously, and mostly it wasn't mostly your stuff that you've got from, from your mother, your folks. I didn't really have a lot, but she had some.

My mother painted, and so I lost, you know, what were the paintings that I wanted. But, I mean, as I told everybody, I mean, my takeaway was, you know, hold on your possessions very lightly because they can be taken away from you. Nobody's in the hospital, nobody's in the morgue, everything else can be replaced. As a little bit of a background, she had already lost some of her jewelry. True. She got it from her mother because somebody broke into our house, burglarized our house six months prior to the fire.

Y'all should move somewhere different. So walk me through the insurance process. Like how big a pain was that?

Were they pretty easy to deal with or was it just, yeah, how much you need? Here's a check. I was remembering, I think that that first night, the lady that met us from the insurance company, she was very helpful. And I think she actually wrote us a check. She did. She wrote us a check that very night. So she's going to need, you know, something to live off of. And now, you know, we've been very frugal. We had savings, we didn't need it.

But for somebody that didn't have a lot of savings, that would have been very helpful. Yeah. I just have to say, our insurance company was wonderful. Which was who, by the way? Farm Bureau.

Farm Bureau. We've had, I mean, that's the only insurance company we've had a policy with the entire time we've been married, basically. But I mean, they were, they were wonderful. We had no complaints.

None at all. We had a good policy. And it was a, it did have the replacement part of it, which we, which we will now say, having lived through it, is worth the money.

Is worth the money. That's one thing, you know, if you don't know what your insurance policy is, you need to find out. Because as we were talking about replacement, the first thing I knew I had to replace my computer, my computer was on the kitchen counter.

And so that was one of the oddest places. So not knowing the replacement side of it, you know, I was out on eBay looking and bought a used computer. And we came to find out, it's like, they said, well, Nancy, you're, you got a replacement policy.

We'll replace it. Because the thing I lost that was the most valuable to me was my piano. So I was out looking for used pianos. And he said, well, do they still make that piano? I said, well, yeah, they do. He says, no. And I'm like, well, yeah. He said, well, Nancy, just go buy a new piano. So I did. We really didn't fully understand what our policy was.

So that was one takeaway for the audience is, please go and ask questions about your policy, what you have and what you don't have. And the other thing would be with the advent of cell phones and everything, take a picture in your house. In our case, our house didn't burn down. We were able to pull everything out on the carport, count it, and register what we had, take pictures of it. But you know, if your house were to burn to the ground, and you don't have any pictures, like on your cell phone, at least you know what you have, because you don't really know what you have. No, you know, I mean, when you've accumulated things for 10, 20, 30, 40 years, nobody's got a memory good enough to know what you just lost.

Yeah. So a couple years ago, we'd been going through some of Molly's mom's stuff, just boxes, VHS tapes and stuff like that. And we popped this, actually had to go buy a VCR somewhere just so we could see what's on some of these VHS tapes. And I popped one of them in, and it was Molly's mom just walking through their house with a video camera, narrating each room. I'm like, what are you doing? What is this being memorialized for? And that's Molly's dad. She said, well, it's probably for insurance. But she was going through and narrating each thing in the house. Probably the only person I've ever known who's actually done that. That is a really good thing to do.

Exactly. So how long did this whole process take to get everything rebuilt? Let's see, the fire was January 11. And we moved back into the house May, first week in May. About first week in May.

First week in May. That strikes me as pretty fast. It actually was pretty fast.

It was actually a little bit quicker than their first estimate that they gave us. But now we have a very small house. I mean, we don't have a 2,000 square foot house, 1,100 square foot house.

Like 1,100 square feet. So you moved back in. It was basically the house built back to what it was before. Did you realize, oh, well, we should have different floors this time. Let's do it this way.

Or how does that all work? No, well, the house was only two years old anyway. So we had built it. We had been years in planning this house. And so no, we didn't change anything. The only thing we changed was I had a vent in the kitchen that was recirculating, and I wanted one that vented outside.

That's really the only thing in the house we changed. Like I say, it was a custom built house to our own plans. And we'd already gone through the process.

So I mean, we were already thrilled with it. So it was just a matter of trying to, and fortunately, Nancy, she kept such great records, great documentation. It was very easy to say to the guys that were doing the rebuilding says, this is what our kitchen sink was. This is what our refrigerator was. This is the model of our commode and where it was obtained. Here's the number for the paint.

Yeah, we had the number for the paint. Go and replace this. So it's all rebuilt. You've moved back in.

It would be tempting to think that's the end. But I know Gary, specifically for you at least, you kind of carried some anxiety with you for a while after that. Walk me through what that looked like. Yeah, well, I had worked at Duke University Health System for many years and sort of a stressful job and getting towards the end of my career anyway. So I was probably not handling stress very well, managing stress very well anyway. So we had the break in six months before the fire. And if you've never had your home broken into and burglarized, that's sort of like a real invasion of your space.

It's a real personal invasion. And then we went through the fire. And so I mean, after that, it was kind of hard for me to function.

Nancy was the one that was taking over immediately after the fire and was kind of running things, as she said, to get us into a hotel and then also into an apartment. Really, even after a while, it says, I'm just not returning back to 100% like I was at work. And I spoke to my doctor about it some, and he suggested, well, why don't you go to a therapist? And so I did go to a therapist over in Durham.

And after about three sessions, she pinpointed, she says, really, it's not so much stress and anxiety. What you are still trying to get past is trauma, sort of, she didn't actually say it, but she described PTSD. So it was, you know, it was very, for me, I was just very traumatic event. And it just took it took me a long time to get on the other side of it. And like I say, I'm still struggling with it even a little bit today. And so that was one of the things that I'm thinking that you were helpful in getting us to get me to a retirement because moving into retirement certainly helped the healing process. So maybe some trouble focusing at work in general beforehand, and then having that off your plate, but you said you're still struggling with some things.

What are the issues you still have ongoing? Oh, it's like getting in big crowds, or if you know, if I had to speak in front of people, which is what my job was a lot about being a project manager, you know, I lead people and speak to a lot of people speak in crowds and run meetings. So are you the one that released this virus so that you wouldn't ever have to be in front of a big crowd again? No, no, I can't say that. I believe that came out from UNC. Yeah. Well, I didn't know if you've been making some bat soup at your house or something.

I believe UNC was doing that research. Sorry, I had to take a dig at you. You do what you must. So all in all, looking back on it, what would be the main things that I mean, it sounds like you had pretty impeccable records. And that's a big thing to be thankful for. And all this was one thing, One more thing, because the house was new. And we bought a lot of the stuff that was in the house from Amazon. We had records of everything we purchased.

And so as you're as you're claiming what you've lost, you know, you have to give a replacement cost for how much it will cost. So anytime you have an account, rather than just buying it as a guest, you know, you have a record. And we were able to really use that as documentation for that. That's a great point.

Yeah. And, you know, the insurance company, you know, it says, you know, and even the guy helping us, he said, You really need to do good record keeping. And my wife took that very much to heart because what they did, gave us two or three little template forms, you know, paper forms, you're not doing this unless paper form. And we make copy after copy after copy. We turned in reams of paper because we were able to go through an inventory, pull everything out from the closets under the bed. We, I mean, it's hard to believe we actually inventoried every can of soup, every bottle of ketchup, if it was in the refrigerator, if it was in the pantry, you know, every towel and washcloth, all the toiletries, all the dishes. I mean, we just went through and she did a wonderful job.

And that was what helped us tremendously. Because after she flooded our adjuster with so much documentation after a while he did he just stopped even questioning the Farm Bureau folks. So just write them a check and be done with them. He says, he says, Yeah, okay, yeah, just just keep passing it in.

He would just he didn't question any of it. And that was how we were able to get a whole lot of money back so that we could go out and buy replacement stuff. Did you really end up having to pay anything out of pocket to get it back to where you wanted it to be? Oh, you know, we had a deductible. And there was there may have been one or two upgrades we did. Like our bed.

Yes, our bed was an upgrade from what we had before. And so that was a little bit out of pocket. But we did. I had that documented and knew that. So you just have to pay the difference over and above the cost of replacement.

Correct. So I mean, I turned in what it would cost to purchase the bed exactly like what we had. And this is what we purchased. And they paid for the replacement cost of what we had. Is there anything looking back on it?

Where you say man, I wish we'd known this beforehand or I wish we'd done this differently. We would have been more prepared going into it doesn't sound like there could be a lot more you would have needed. No, I think the fact that the house was new anyway is part of that. Because I had all the records from having built that I mean, if it had been a house we've been in in 20 years, it probably wouldn't have been like that at all.

Yeah, as Nancy mentioned, and you saw firsthand with the VCR tape. I mean, if you're not in a position like us where we've got pretty good records of something we just built two years ago, it really would behoove you to really take the tedious, non-fun time to just inventory at least the major things in your house. And we didn't have any things that would be considered collectibles, any questionable items.

There wasn't a Rembrandt on the wall or anything like that. So ours was pretty easy compared to some. All your Andy Griffith DVDs were replaceable. They were replaceable.

They were. My thanks to Gary and Nancy for sharing their story. The main thing that struck me from this conversation was how much trouble you can save yourself later in the event of a tragedy by going to a little bit of extra effort now. Doing those things like the inventory of your belongings to catalog everything that you have in the home, or making sure that everything you buy online is under a user account instead of just checking out as a guest so that you can easily recreate a list of everything you've bought. And it's a pretty good lesson for a lot of things in life. Enduring just a little bit of headache up front to save yourself a much bigger potential headache later. Thanks for tuning in to Mr. Stillman's Opus, and we'll talk with you again soon.