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Richard Flanders
PGCA Member
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Posted: Thu May 21st, 2009 06:24 am |
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My hunting partner and neighbor's log house went up in flames today. No one home when it started. A total loss. He lost what he says is $50.000 in guns, which I think is an underestimate. He had 15 pre-64 Winchesters in just one of the safes, a high end Browning model. When I arrived there was nothing but ashes and the safe was on it's back and smoking hot. I went and got my trailer and winched it on and headed for the locksmith to get it opened. We sawed a hole in the bottom with hole saws then a sawzall and pulled guns, or what was left of them, out. Seems they're all a total loss. What a sad mess! Wood stocks were charcoaled, every gun totally blackened. And this safe was on the outside wall of a lean to type addition. I figured it would have worked, but not so. Not near enough fire rating. Log houses burn very very hot. Whew. Sooo sad. At least he had already sold his collection of unfired Mod 23's. He must have lost 70 or so guns all totalled. Melted the ribs off a vintage Hercules .410 S/S that was his grandfathers. Sad loss. All other dbls, mostly O/U's, stayed together. Plastic stocked rifles look humorous if it weren't so sad. Pretty big loss to the Pre-64 Win world.... Will post a pic when I go up to help clean up.
I was/am totally impressed with the firemen that showed up. 4 different areas sent every truck they had because it's very dry here and this could have started a major forest fire if not contained. They gave it everything they had. They even cut the garage doors out and went in as the story above was completely engulfed and started tossing out whatever they could of value...ammo, tools, old snowshoes, whatever, and even emptied the freezers of game meat and tossed it out onto the ground while someone went for an empty freezer from a neighbor then set up a small genset to keep it going in the yard, this as the house is a huge fireball and collapsing above them while their buddies hosed it down. Can there be more amazing service than that?
Last edited on Thu May 21st, 2009 06:31 am by Richard Flanders
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Dean Romig
PGCA Member
| Joined: | Fri Jan 7th, 2005 |
| Location: | Andover, Ma |
| Posts: | 4887 |
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Posted: Thu May 21st, 2009 09:49 am |
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| Very sad Richard. I think a house fire is what we all fear most. Dean
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Richard Flanders
PGCA Member
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Posted: Thu May 21st, 2009 04:01 pm |
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Roger that Dean. Wait until I post a picture of a pile of the wrong kind of "black guns". You can see a picture of the house burning at http://www.newsminer.com. It made the front page. If you read the article you can't help but be impressed at the owner's humor about the situation. Tom states that he was glad he saved his best shirt by wearing it yesterday..... a GB Packers Tshirt.... and his wife Kate says with a grin that now that they no longer own birth certificates they can now lie about their ages... I'm impressed. I guarantee you that there will be a new and even nicer log house on the site by snowfall this year. The log builder, a friend who also built my house, was researching a source for a set of logs before the house was even half burned....
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Dean Romig
PGCA Member
| Joined: | Fri Jan 7th, 2005 |
| Location: | Andover, Ma |
| Posts: | 4887 |
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Posted: Thu May 21st, 2009 05:16 pm |
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Hope springs eternal 
They have great attitudes about their tragic loss but, what else can they do 
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Dave Suponski
PGCA Member
| Joined: | Thu Jan 6th, 2005 |
| Location: | Connecticut USA |
| Posts: | 1027 |
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Posted: Thu May 21st, 2009 06:15 pm |
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Rich,My brother lost his newly remodeled home due to a fire the day after Thanksgiving 5 or 6 years ago up in Vermont.Fortunatly no guns were lost as he didn,t really have any in the house.
The out-pouring of the people in the area with food,clothing and offers of places to stay was truly heart wrenching.What really blew me away was when they stopped in the local clothing store/outfitter and the owner asked if they were the folks that just had the fire. When my brother told him "yes" the owner promptly gave them $2500.00 worth of clothes "on the house!"This kind of thing really restores your faith in your fellow man.
In two months he had built an apartment on the original foundation and at 55 years old he spent the rest of the winter dropping hemlocks on his property for their new log home! I really admire him for his fortitude. Kind of like "put your head down and move forward"
I wish your neighbors all the best in their efforts to recover from this disaster.
____________________
Dave....
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Richard Flanders
PGCA Member
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Posted: Sat May 23rd, 2009 04:54 pm |
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Here are some promised pictures. Seems relevant in showing that even a good gun safe may not be good enough; this one was the best of the best when purchased but was not even close to adequate. My project for today is to remove the rest of the safe bottom with a hand grinder, sawzall, and a cutting torch if necessary to get to the rest of the guns in the top of the safe. That will be a bit of an effort but needs to be done for insurance purposes. Here's the safe. We sure got the looks as we went down the roads to the locksmith shop with that smoking safe on the trailer.
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 Last edited on Sat May 23rd, 2009 04:55 pm by Richard Flanders
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Richard Flanders
PGCA Member
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Posted: Sat May 23rd, 2009 04:57 pm |
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The first few guns we pulled out. They look so bad from plastic smoke coating them all. Some of the buttstock wood is fine if you scrape the black off. Thinner forend wood is charcoaled. The plastic/kevlar? stocked Kimber at the top looks like the Terminator after coming out of a blast furnace....
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 Last edited on Sat May 23rd, 2009 05:28 pm by Richard Flanders
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Richard Flanders
PGCA Member
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Posted: Sat May 23rd, 2009 04:59 pm |
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This is the only shotgun Toms father ever owned. A model 11 Remington 12ga. It is highly engraved(aftermarket) with a slightly thin stock from being sanded and recheckered......after it went through a house fire long ago and was redone.
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Richard Flanders
PGCA Member
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Posted: Sat May 23rd, 2009 05:02 pm |
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A Browning BSS 12ga. Strangely enough most of the dbls still function. I was able to open and cock and fire most of them. And the bores are still shiny in most. Most ribs melted off. Some buttplates are nearly like new still. If you can get the bolts to work on the Winchesters they still fire also.
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 Last edited on Sat May 23rd, 2009 05:09 pm by Richard Flanders
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Richard Flanders
PGCA Member
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Posted: Sat May 23rd, 2009 05:08 pm |
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This is our work party last night. He had many many thousands of rounds of ammo of all sorts in the garage that survived. We're putting everything into that conex in the background. We left quite a layer of ash on the floor and tables of the place we went to for burgers after this little gathering last night. The dog kennel is behind the garage. The firemen got to them, 4 goldens, in time and released them. Apparently they thought the firemen and their hoses were a good time and were running around playing with them and tugging on hoses. The main house to the left was connected to the garage/cabin on the right with a hallway so the fire migrated. Current theory is that it started from their 3 day old Sears refrigerator.... apparently a number of places have burned as a result of new Sears fridges.... not good. Another lesson here is to have a picture and spreadsheet database of all your guns and have a copy off site somewhere. Mine is going onto a thumb drive and will be hung on a nail in the shed by the end of today....
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 Last edited on Sat May 23rd, 2009 05:14 pm by Richard Flanders
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Richard Flanders
PGCA Member
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Posted: Sat May 23rd, 2009 05:21 pm |
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The remains of the main house, two log stories over a basement. The fire marshall told us the fire reached 2000degF.
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Richard Flanders
PGCA Member
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Posted: Sat May 23rd, 2009 05:23 pm |
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Here's what I've gotten out of the safe so far. Pretty sad.
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George Lander
Member
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Posted: Sat May 23rd, 2009 08:51 pm |
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Rich: None of us every wants to experience anything like this. Thank God no one was inside & no one was injured. Even the dogs were spared. Things can be replaced & Sears has got some deep pockets. Best wishes to you and your neighbors.
George
____________________
" Never Send To Know For Whom The Bell Tolls, It Tolls For Thee " ...John Donne
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Brian Stucker
Member
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Posted: Sat May 23rd, 2009 09:49 pm |
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Hard to look at the pictures. Sickening, but thanks for posting them. Serious wake up call; going to check all of my wires/outlets in both the attic and basement. Also, time to refresh the rodent bait around the house as well.
Sure hope we don't see any pictures like that for a while [ever].
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Brian Stucker
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bobpeters
Member
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Posted: Sun May 24th, 2009 01:14 am |
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Richard,
I do not know your neighbor, but I have a draw knife and a great double head axe. I have worked on many log homes, a day of fishing would be worth a weeks worth of peeling logs for a home to keep a family warm for the winter. Thru you there are alot of people that will help.\
Send m a pm, if it will work, maybe I can come and help rebuild. I am a skilled saywer, maybe I can help?
BP
____________________
WST-RIP
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Richard Flanders
PGCA Member
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Posted: Sun May 24th, 2009 01:40 am |
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I cut the bottom out of the safe with a sawzall and hand grinder... quite a chore but worth it. Tom is raking the wreckage out here.
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Richard Flanders
PGCA Member
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Posted: Sun May 24th, 2009 01:42 am |
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The inside of the safe. There are 4 expensive shotguns still in there that you can't even see here + other treasures we were quite anxious to find.
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Richard Flanders
PGCA Member
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Posted: Sun May 24th, 2009 01:44 am |
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Here are most of the guns that came out today. One of the bottom ones is a Win 23, the others high end Berettas. The wad at the top is two Berettas believe it or not. There was a couple more pistols. Total count of guns that came out of the safe totalled 35 as close as we can count.
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Richard Flanders
PGCA Member
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Posted: Sun May 24th, 2009 01:50 am |
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This is what we were really after. Two limited edition gold coins from the NWT in Canada, from a mint that does not exist any longer. Each is one of only 200 minted. They're 99.99% gold. We raked two heaping wheel barrows of rubble out and sorted every fragment through our fingers looking for these and they appear to be in good shape, but coated with melted plastic from the little cases they came in. I found one early and Tom found the other in the very last shovel full of stuff we sorted. I can't tell you how gratifying finding them was. I spent last night fabricating a plan on how to get the bottom off and how to sort the rubbish just to find these two coins and it worked after maybe 2 hours of pretty intense labor. I'm a very happy guy... as are Tom and his wife as you can imagine. Gold was $958 yesterday.
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 Last edited on Sun May 24th, 2009 02:54 pm by Richard Flanders
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Richard Flanders
PGCA Member
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Posted: Sun May 24th, 2009 01:57 am |
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These were a gift from a friend today and are the truth. They will rebuild a nicer house than they had before, guaranteed. For my part, I'm a jewelry dealer so gave Kate a nice sterling silver necklace with little gold rosettes on it. I put it on here while telling her that even if she was grubbing in the ashes she should look and feel like a lady and that she had to start somewhere after losing all her jewelry and that it might as well be today.... she was moved to tears and I'm sure will not forget the gesture.
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 Last edited on Sun May 24th, 2009 02:05 am by Richard Flanders
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