The Times - Serving Waitsburg, Dayton and the Touchet Valley

Investigators are still searching for the cause of a fire late Sunday night that destroyed two homes on East Washington Avenue in Dayton.

"Honestly I don't know if we'll ever find out what started it," Fire Chief Rick Turner, of Columbia County Fire District 3, told me on Monday afternoon. "We're still working on it, but the fire completely destroyed the house, and any little bit of evidence there was is probably gone."

Nobody was injured in the fire, which started at 11:25 p.m. in an unoccupied, derelict home on the corner at 203 E. Washington Ave. That structure and the house next door, owned by Dan and Rosy Nechodom, were both unoccupied that night. The Swan family, who had been renting the Nechodom house, were not at home.

Fire!

I was parked at the curb in front of 209 E. Washington Ave., the next house over from the Nechodom property, when the fire started. I have been renting the home there, owned by Steve and Jody Martin, for the last two years but had been in the process of moving out for several days.

Hoping to finish the move on Monday, the next day, I had stayed late at the home with my daughters, 16-year-old Wren and 14-year-old Chase, to pack belongings and clean. Chase was going to spend the night in the house with our Shih Tzu, Maggie, so she could continue to work on her room. With temperatures over 100 that day, she was planning to run a cool bath when Wren and I left for the night.

Wren had forgotten some items she needed in the house and was inside grabbing them while I waited in the truck, windows rolled down. I was sending an email on my iPhone. It was 11:24 p.m. Something caught my eye on the corner of the block. It looked like a flicker of light. There were no other lights down there, other than the street lamp. No smoke. No people around. No sounds.

I opened the door to the cab and climbed out to see better. Fire! I could see a single tongue of flames at the front of the dark, dilapidated house. In a matter of seconds, flames erupted from several sides of the building and engulfed the entire structure. Swallowed it whole.

Race to Action

I don't remember well the next few seconds. I remember seeing my daughter locking the front door, her back to the street, with a bundle of belongings in her hands. I remember screaming at her. "Get Chase. Tell her to get Maggie and get out of the house. Now!" My voice is still hoarse as I write this, from all the hollering I did that night.

In the confusion that followed – Wren not understanding why I was in a panic, then panicking herself and trying to get her sister to comply with the evacuation – I could feel the oven-heat of the fire from my yard.

I dialed 911 on my phone and looked up to see thick clouds and flying, burning embers streaming over my head toward all the hot, dry and unprotected yards of my neighborhood. My hands were shaking and my stomach was in knots. This was my first house fire. And I was sure all the homes in the block were going to ignite from the burning embers.

The Swans! I looked back to the dark house next door, between me and the inferno. I had no idea if Michelle and Scott Swan were asleep in the house with their family. I knew they were in the process of moving out as well, but there were a number of cars in front of the house. I raced to their front porch, holding my phone as the line to 911 rang in my ear.

The heat was nearly unbearable in the neighbor's yard. Embers were raining down everywhere. And the gusting wind was blowing flames onto the Nechodom house, at 205 E. Washington Ave., where the Swans had been renters for several months. It was already catching fire on the west side.

The house had a glass-paneled front door. I banged on the door with my fist and hollered as loudly as I could. I could see my own front yard from the porch, and I yelled at Chase to get the dog and get in the truck. The 911 operator wanted to know the address of my emergency. I tried to give her the information and continue pounding on the door, hollering, at the same time. She said she was having computer problems and told me to stay on the line.

Chase came up on the porch with me. Wren and the dog were getting in the truck. Chase was on the phone. She yelled to me: "They're not home. I have Michelle on the phone, and they're staying at their new place. They're not here."

Saving Other Homes

Thank goodness. We dashed off the porch and ran to the truck. We jumped in, and I drove west, past the blaze. We could see that the west side of the Nechodom house was now on fire. I remembered the 911 operator, but I had dropped the phone on the floor of the pickup cab in my haste to get away from the heat and the embers. Holding a cellphone to your ear and shifting gears is not easy under the best of circumstances.

I screeched to a halt on the corner of North First and East Washington, in front of a vacant home for sale, kitty-corner from the burning houses. "Oh no! My shoes!" Chase cried. I thought she was worried about them burning up – turns out, she was barefoot and hadn't realized until just then.

I think we must have stood on the corner watching for a full minute in awe. Less than five minutes had passed, and the house on the corner was almost gone. It was a blackened skeleton against the bright glare of the flames. One or two people were now out on the street, taking photos on their phones, texting or calling other people.

My brain started working again. The most important thing was done. Everyone was out of the nearby houses and safe. I sent Chase to wake the neighbors directly across the alley from the burning houses. As she left, Deputy Jason DeVoir arrived on the scene. I suggested he alert other neighbors while we waited for the fire trucks. The rain of embers was thick.

It then occurred to me that my house was going to be next. What was left in there? I thought about all the boxes and furniture stacked in the living room ready for the big haul planned for the next day. Books, mementos, photos, camera, computer, piano, kitchen stuff. Goldfish, frogs and turtle. Chase was going to be so upset by the loss of the pets.

When Chase was back from alerting the neighbors, she and I took Maggie in the truck and raced off to wake Chris Ver Valen, my former husband. I was going to need help. We left Wren to take photos on my phone and keep in touch with me should things change. As I drove (over the speed limit I'm sure – sorry everyone), down Main Street, I was passed by the first fire engine. Another quickly followed.

After alerting Chris, we returned to the scene. We could see the blaze from Main Street at the corner of 3rd Street. My heart sank. I was sure my house was already alight. But it did not catch fire. Several bushes in the back yard burned to the ground. A few spots are black in the front yard. But Chris and Tony Willis, who lives across East Washington from the fire, were in the yard of our rental for more than an hour with hoses, soaking everything they could reach and putting out all the little flames that took hold.

Firefighters, Friends Prevent Further Damage

Within a few minutes of my arrival back at the scene, the fire district had engines hooked to hydrants and were pumping streams of water at the main fire, the Nechodom's house and any flames trying to spread to our place. I spotted Dan Nechodom in the street a block away. He approached me.

"Is everyone okay?" Michelle Swan had called him after she got off the phone with my daughter, and he had raced over from his new residence in Waitsburg. "Yes," I told him. "Everyone is fine."

"That's all that matters then," he said.

In the hours that followed, I spent time with the Swans, who had arrived to sit on the curb opposite the fire and hold each other as the flames took nearly all their earthly possessions. Several pet rabbits, which had been kept in a hutch on the west side of the home, were gone.

Family and friends rallied around the Swans. Scott, who was away working out of state, had already been told of the loss. Michelle was hugging my daughter, Chase, who cried when she thought about their loss and was shaking with the adrenaline – and a little fear when she realized she would have been alone in the house, in the bathtub, as the fire broke out if it had happened just a few minutes later.

The smoke was thick as the firefighters fought the blaze. The house on the corner was gone. It burned to the ground. The Nechodom house was gutted, and the roof caved in. Dan Nechodom said he's meeting with his insurance assessor this week, but he assumes it will be a total loss. He, and the Ihle family before him, raised dozens of their own children and foster children in that home, he said.

Loss and Support

Timothy Ihle, one of the children fostered in that home, was at the scene on Sunday night. He watched quietly with my daughter, Wren, from the curb. "A lot of childhood memories going up in smoke," he said to her. Marshall Nechodom, who spent most of his late childhood in the house with his parents, was standing at the white picket fence around the house gazing at the wreckage the next morning when I stopped by to check on things.

Nick Page

Firefighters worked through the night to control the blaze that destroyed two homes and threatened another in Dayton, Sunday night. In this photo, the home in the foreground is almost completely gone.

"Did you have anything in the house?" I asked him. "Oh yeah," he said. "Lots of things. But it's all good." He took a piece of the picket fence as a memento and wandered away.

The garage seems to have survived, Dan Nechodom said on Monday afternoon. Several expensive pieces of sports equipment were in the garage, he said. But a few priceless family heirlooms – a chandelier and a sewing table – were lost.

The Swan family lost nearly everything. They had a few things at their new residence, but not much. But on Tuesday, Michelle had posted on Facebook that she'd found a few totes of items that may be salvageable. And her family and friends continue to rally around her and her family. Several started a donation fund for the family at http://www.gofundme.com/theswans.

"Feeling very humbled," Michelle wrote on Facebook Monday night. "Thank you everyone for your gracious love and support. Has been a very difficult day and we survived it!"