Fire and Ice

After viewing so many images of the fire at the Old Market area of Omaha, NE., a memory from my past has been on my mind. Another time in life when a few minutes could have made a major impact on the future of the Harris family.

New Year’s Eve day, 1967, began for our family around 5am. My younger brother Phil had gotten up to get a drink of water because his throat was so dry. With his Boy Scout flashlight shining the way to the kitchen, he noticed it was “foggy” in the house and should probably tell my parents.

He went in their room, and I think his presence woke my father. The house was filled with thick smoke. My mother ran up to the second floor to wake my sister and I. Upstairs the smoke was so thick, I could only see the figure of someone as my mother woke me. I had turned my face into my pillow, no doubt to breathe better, but the shock of the situation made us all dash for the stairway.

The front door was at the bottom of the stairway, and that is the exit we should have used. However, we were going to go to the Peterson house across the street from our back door, so we all headed through the house to the back door. I remember thinking “What a mess this is going to be to clean up!” There was yellowish green smoke curling from below the fireplace hearth in the living room. My dad had tried to call the fire department, but the phone did not work. Within minutes, in our pajamas, we all stepped into whatever boots were by the door, winter coats and headed across the street. It was -17 degrees that morning, and the frigid air stung our faces.

At the Peterson home, my dad called the Holdrege Volunteer Fire Department, and we were amazed how quickly they arrived. Within 10 minutes trucks began arriving, and we were also now seeing flames through the windows of our home. The main floor had already collapsed. Minutes before we were all making our way to the back door across that floor. Little did we know of the inferno below us in the basement.

It is hard to describe the next few hours. We were all perched at various windows in the Peterson home, and little by little our house began falling in as flames s devoured it. It was a spectacular sight, as the overspray water from the fireman hoses froze on the trees in our yard, making it like a crystal forest. The fireman would have to take turns holding the hoses as their arms would freeze in the position of holding the hose as the overspray also covered them. I remember seeing one of them put his arm around my dad and say, “I’m sorry Russ. We are going to have to just let her go.”

All day it burned, and several days later little hot spots would start up again with flames. It looked like the house had been bombed. Strangely, losing everything but our pajamas seemed insignificant as we were all alive and together. Immediately the community began to offer help. It was a Sunday, but the local drug store opened up for us to come down and get tooth brushes, deoderant, other toiletries etc. When we approached the cash register, the owner shook his head, and then shook my dads hand. The owner of the JC Penney store had us come down and we each purchased 2 outfits and some underwear. Many people brought clothing and other things to help out the first few days.

My parents rebuilt on the same corner. A brick ranch style home on a street with many stately looking older two story homes, but that corner was home for many years. I have thought many times how things could have turned out so differently. The picture of our entire family, minus my mother and father, at my father’s memorial service would be non existent if we had perished that day.

One thing we were saddened about was losing all of the pictures of us when we were babies and in our younger years. But another bright spot was that the filing cabinent in the basement which held most of the pictures had tipped over in the 4 feet of water accumulated in the basement from the water. The water froze quickly, freezing most of the pictures that had dumped out of the drawers. A friend who was a local photographer helped to restore many of these pictures.

As a closing thought, make sure your family has a plan for escape should a fire ever happen in your home. Now with the smoke alarms, there is likely better opportunity to know something is happening than in 1967.