A burden too heavy and a few new places to stay short term

Hi everyone, this is my fourth installment of what we have been through in the past year. If you are just joining us, you should head back to the beginning and read “Fire Safety and protections from the flames” next is “Homeowner’s insurance, Renter’s insurance and most importantly Blessed Assurance” the previous installment is “What are you prepared to do? Where will you go? Who will go?”

Next week we get a call from the nice lady at the RV/camper place.  We can’t use the used camper she was thinking of, but they have just bought a different one just for us and it’ll be perfect for what we need.  Yes! Score! Something is going to work out, everything is going to be okay.  She continues “are you going to be in the camper during the winter months as well?”  Yes, possibly it is already September.  “You guys are going to freeze” she says.  She doesn’t mind renting us the camper and she will make sure it is winterized for us, but she just wants us to know they aren’t very warm even with winter skirting added.  Several people at our home church confirmed this fact for us.  Bummer, now what.  My wife is looking for a Verbo or Airbnb and she says, “hey this one is hosted by …… There is a really cool story that fits in here, but for privacy reasons it has been left out.  I may add it back in later, who knows.  We end up booking this Airbnb and now have a place to stay for a while.  It worked out nice because it is located close to our house so we can feed and check on our chickens and I can document the removal of our contents and the demo of the house.  Remember what I said earlier?  Document everything!  I’ve got pictures, I’ve got videos, I got the dirty duct work the SRC said they cleaned.  I can prove TRC left some of my items in the house for storage…. This will be important later when we get there.

One lawyer I spoke to recommended having a home inspection done at this point.  I recommend that to you as well.  I’m not sure I could’ve inspected my own home, but I’ve got enough videos and pictures of the disaster created by SRC and TRC to prove they did more damage than the fire.  I started a full-time job as an inspector for big construction jobs and was told when taking videos and photos for my reports to not get any people in the shots if possible.  For a catastrophe like a fire with the insurance and these remediation companies involved I absolutely recommend recording everything.  Set up cameras on tripods everywhere they are working, wear a bodycam, pay your contractor and your lawyer I told you to have existing relationships with to follow the remediation company people around.  That sounds like it might get expensive.  Best choice is to just let your contractor, who you know, and you trust do the work.  If you can’t do that see if you can have them or one of their employees, be your on-site inspector to document everything.  Here in West Virginia any job over $10,000 requires a written contract.  Make sure you read it, have your lawyer read it.  Make sure it has completion milestones for set amounts of money.  Now I’m a contractor also so I can’t say never pay a contractor upfront.  I get paid upfront for inspecting houses and septic systems.  It protects me, but I have an agreement stating what I will do for the money, we have a contract.  Now if I go inspect a house and the client backs out at the last minute and I don’t get money upfront, what do they care, they aren’t buying it, they don’t need the report.  A remediation job is most likely going to be a big job.  Make sure you have those milestones, benchmarks and your written contract stating how much the contractor gets paid for each item or milestone completed.  I will say to try and avoid deposits of anything more that 10 to 15 grand.  When you start going higher on your deposits you increase the likelihood of the remediation contractor just walking off the job, because hey they already got the money.  One lawyer explained it to me like this “it is much easier to not pay and not have to fight to get the money back, than it is to try and get it back after it is paid”

Okay back to my story.  We pack up and move to the Airbnb we will have to move out and back in a few times, because some dates were already booked.  No big deal, we have a place to stay for most of the winter.  I watch TRC do demo work, I watch and help them pack the belongings out of the house.  I wish I had set up tripods and bodycams to have video recording of everything, but you can learn from my mistakes.  I move my tools to a shipping container.  I catch a couple of the employees from TRC constantly in areas they weren’t working in.  I found one all the way out where my geese and chickens are while his supervisor had been looking for him for almost 30 minutes.  She never brought that guy back so thankfully I didn’t need to make a big deal about it, but I should’ve.  Big red flag!  Should’ve had a lawyer there.   

I notice the boys they brought out to pack up and carry out my belongings are only putting one or two things per great big cardboard box, “Hey, what’s up with this? fill the boxes up.” I say.  “We can’t they are too heavy” I’m told… What?  You have got to be kidding?  Okay maybe, I don’t know, I could carry boxes heavier than that when I was 10, maybe people don’t work anymore when they are little, okay who am I to judge.  I try to consolidate boxes as they are put into the shipping container to save space.  If you’ve ever seen the move Big Jake with John Wayne, you know about the strong box with the money.  If you haven’t seen it, you probably need to watch it.  I’m not sure if John Wayne movies go in the category of movies we ought not watch or not, maybe a pastor can jump in and let me know one way or the other.  Anyway, I felt like Jacob McCandles “Big Jake” carrying boxes it took two or three of the others to carry. 

We get everything cataloged and moved out about the time we need to move out of the Airbnb to somewhere else.  Now it is on my dad’s portion of the claim, so I don’t really need to be there every single day…. WRONG!  Well, I wasn’t there every day, so you should learn from my mistake.  Go back and read the paragraph above about documenting everything.  I stopped by every couple days, though, and I have lots of documentation.  I was there when the HVAC guy came to check the furnace so that is good.  He is now saying different duct work didn’t exist, but I have photos and videos that the duct work was there.  But that’s later in March I’ll get there.  One day we had something in the evening, maybe Truth Trackers at our church.  I brought my oldest down with me so I wouldn’t have to go back and get him.  It was supposed to be nice weather but ended up being cold and rainy.  We had a building I had built for goats, but we ended up selling the goats before the building got used.  I was able to set him up in there with his camp chair, a Mr. Buddy heater, a blanket, and his tablet.  I got a great picture of him hanging out in there.  I’m not going to put it online though.  If you would like to see if you can ask me sometime.

So, demo finishes around the end of October.  Then I’m told the TRC will be back to winterize the house, because now the heat has been disconnected.  Then in November I’m told “Well hunting season is coming up” In December I’m told “we will have someone out by the end of the week to winterize the waterlines” They never showed up.  What about all the things that needed climate control they left in the house?  Yep, still sitting in the house.  No climate control, no heat.  Do you know that houses are meant to be lived in?

Ecclesiastes 10:18 says “By much slothfulness the building decayeth; and through idleness of the hands the house droppeth through.

The slothfulness of TRC is causing more damage to the house.

Now I’m going to ask you dear reader, have you told yourself “I can accept Christ as my savior later?”  “I’ve still got time” Do you have time?  The rich fool who tore down his barns to build bigger didn’t have any more time.  Don’t be slothful don’t be lazy Psalm 95:7-8 says “For he is our God; and we are the people of his pasture, and the sheep of his hand. To day if ye will hear his voice,” There is a parallel to this in Hebrews.  Today is the day to hear his voice and repent.  Turn to Christ Jesus as your savior. 

The tale of the people who had the fire continues with “Winter is fast approaching.” We are nearing the end of 2024 and coming up on the beginning of 2025.