HanSolo77's Fire Pictures

[hansolo77]

I was going to post my pics in here, but I then learned that there's a 29.3mb GLOBAL filesize limit. So I can't really upload them. Instead, I've linked them here through Photobucket.

Ya'll should have learned by now about the fire that hit my home. I won't go into the long story again, so these are just the pictures of the damage. These are moslty POST RECOVERY of what I could salvage.

These are the steps leading up the bedrooms.

The view into my bedroom from the hallway at the top of the stairs. No roof, no ceiling.

View of the bathroom from the hallway.

View of Dad's room from the hallway.

Closeup of the bathtub.

Closeup of the most important seat in the house.

Inside my bedroom, my computer desk on the far wall. The lower right corner is the foot of my waterbed I had. I didn't keep it. Also visible is my Star Wars Trivial pursuit. Didn't keep that either.

View of my bed.

The inside of my closet. The bookshelf had all my DVD's on them. Didn't keep that. The file cabinet was gutted of all important documents prior to finally leaving it to the "muckers". Didn't keep that either.

No roof or ceiling!

TO BE CONTINUED....

[Adultery]

Yikes!

[hansolo77]

No roof or ceiling again!

This is actually a view of the wall behind my door, between the door and the closet. This is where my TV and HTPC once sat. The 1-inch diameter holes were from me, taking out my frustrations about the damage with hammer. The wall itself is missing because the fire department needed to check the area behind it for still burning embers.

This is an exterior view of the building. 109 is ours, and the 2 windows with the fully closed blinds were my bedroom.

Another view of the building. We're second from the right end. The blue tarp was laid over the 2 units in the building that weren't damaged. They eventually tore the whole building down, but this gave those residents time to get everything out. The fire started in the empty unit right next to where the blue tarp ends.

Another exterior of the front of the building.

View of the damage from the back. Our unit is behind the pine tree..

Better angle from the back of just our unit.

Yup, pretty bad. I don't know if I mentioned it before, but our unit was actually the WORST damaged out of the whole building. I forget what the term is (it's not backdraft) but we experienced the fire coming from 2 directions. If looking from the front of the building, it spread to the right, passed us, then bounced back once it hit the outside wall on the far right. So we got it twice. The other unit's only got 1, and the end unit was put out first. If you're interested, I've got more pictures in the photobucket album.

http://s5.photobucket.com/albums/y190/hansolo77/Fire%20Damage/

Also, if anybody is interested... I'll upload the rebuilding progression too. I know Draco and Adultery want to see the picture of my HTPC, but I don't have one of that yet. I'll try and get it tomorrow though.

[Adultery]

No worries Han! We're not going anywhere.

Don't know what I'd do in your situation, it saddens me.

[Draco1962]

I have had friends and family members deal with great loses due to fire. My aunt lost her home a few years ago to a fire while at the hospital on the day my uncle died from surgical complications following abdominal aneurysm repair. Talk about a double-whammy. It is horrific to say the least when you have so many things, momentos, pictures and keepsakes. I thank God she was not there. Surprisingly, some things that were important to both did survive because they were shielded in a fire-rated safe.

[hansolo77]

Yeah, I actually lost a lot more than I salvaged. Pretty much everything was destroyed, not by the fire but by the fire fighting. Anything that was made of wood was destroyed because they swelled and split. Other things like cardboard didn't survive either (hench the Star Wars game). I ended up having to completely replace all my DVD cases with new ones, and reprint the cover sleeves. No movie company was willing to just "replace" them. The only guys that were willing were Disney, and they wanted like $5 per movie, and all they would do was replace the Disk. My disks were fine, so I just redid the cases.

The fire department dumped like 30,000 gallons of water a second on this thing and it still didn't put it out. They had to call in a special truck that did some kind of foaming spray to put it out. The foam had it out in like 2 minutes, when they were using water hoses for like 45 minutes. We were so pissed it took them so long to get that foaming truck. A lot of stuff could have been different if they did. The fire might not have even spread to our unit. If you look at all the other photobucket pictures, I have a lot of pictures of MOLD and stuff. I actually had to take those so the health department could compensate us if we got sick. There was asbestos too, which didn't help the salvaging. The hardest part was just deciding what to take and what to leave. I kept everything electronic, and then stuff like DVDs, Comics, Video Games. I had 2 boxes of PlayBoy magazines from back in the late '70s to mid '80's that my uncle gave me. They didn't make it. Kinda pissed me off too.. on the 2nd or 3rd day of salvaging, I discovered somebody had been in there and left one of the centerfolds open on the bed. It just disturbed me so much that somebody was in there that had no business being there. The cops were supposed to be keeping a 24 hour watch on the place. In one of the pictures, my "broken" LCD tv was left in the downstairs hallway one day during salvaging. Came back the next day, and it was gone. Somebody broke in through the back patio doors and stole it. It was broke, so it was no big deal. BUT SOMEBODY WAS IN THERE AND STOLE IT!!!

Well, I'm sure nobody wants to hear me rant. Enjoy the pictures. Cya tomorrow.

[Adultery]

Actually it doesn't surprise me at all that people were rummaging through your stuff. The kind of people that sneak in and do that stuff have a habit to support if you know what I mean.

[hansolo77]

It's just disturbing to know somebody you DON'T know was in there, getting into your stuff.

[Adultery]

I completely understand. We were robbed when I was younger, and I remember that feeling of being violated. It was really s4!tty and I wanted to kill the people that did it. Never dd find em.

[Draco1962]

On every level there are leechers in life. Sux when it happens to you. I have to imagine how much more it must suck for those that have to do it (and not saying for the ones that have the choice and do it anyways) to survive.

[celly]

Oh my god Han! I feel for you terrible situation. Sometimes bad things happen to good people and, sometimes things happen for a reason. I'm sure there is a silver lining in there somewhere.

On a side note, if you ever want to play that Star Wars Trivial Pursuit again, let me know.

[hansolo77]

Yeah I'm kinda bummed about that game. I only played it once, against my DAD who was nerdy like me when it first came out. He actually beat me because he "tricked" me on a question, and I gave it too him. He beat me by 1 question! Good memory though.

As for a silver lining, the only things I can think of is the stuff I replaced... A bigger LCD tv, a true surround reciever and speakers (actually, I got my old one for $125 bucks, and this one I spent my entire $1300 income tax refund on), and a replacement Xbox 360 (old one got a single red RROD E74 error) that's newer and better than my old one. That's about it. Negatively, I now have to live with our landlord because she got engaged to DAD! UHG!

[Adultery]

The silver lining in THAT situation is you don't have to worry about being evicted! LOL

[hansolo77]

No, just kicked out

[Draco1962]

I guess that makes me a landlord then. I have kicked out a few in my time... "Kick the baby.." "Don't kick the baby!" "KICK THE BABY!" " EiEeeeeeeeee!"

[Adultery]

LOL! No kick da baby!

[hansolo77]

Adultery, did you get my PM?

[Adultery]

I will now! I'm on the Droid and it doesn't get PM notifications.

[hansolo77]

Heh ok, fixed now.

[Draco1962]

Here are some links to a few post-apocalyptic case mods:

Now this one is not post-apocalyptic, but still shows scratches, dings, and stains due to wear and abuse...

Of course, there is also the DracLabs link in my sig for more.

[hansolo77]

Ok, here's the pictures of the HTPC case.

The front crud.

The top crud.

[Adultery]

Completely salvageable. The stress adds character IMHO.

[hansolo77]

Yup. I don't care what it looks like. I don't even look at it like 95% of the time. It's on the bottom shelf of a 3-shelf tv stand anyway.. Granted, it looks nasty when you REALLY care, it was awesome when it was brand new. Shiny and streak/blotch free. But it fulfills it's purpose, which is all I need it for.

[Adultery]

I mean, you could detail the plastic parts with alcohol, sand it (or strip it rather), and murder it out with a black matte spray paint and a matte clear coat, or you could use a glossy spray paint and clear coat and make it look brand new (if you were so inclined).

If you tape off the LCD and buttons with painter's tape (using cardboard tofill the gaps and an exacto knife to cut the tape right), it shouldn't be too hard to get that shine back.

[Draco1962]

Of course you could strip it down and then have it powder coated to a nice glossy sheen - or mod the heck out of it! The Zalman cases are pretty nice, but I can think of a few ideas already to take advantage of the damage.