Collateral Damage

The house next door caught fire in January.

I wanted to be at work early that morning, so I scurried through the morning jobs and hustled my daughter out the door to preschool. I zipped back home and whizzed up a pumpkin smoothie for the road. I gathered up my things and walked to the office.

The smoke alarm must have been beeping as I walked between the houses, because twenty minutes later flames were pouring from the back of the house. Another neighbor called the fire department. Twenty-five minutes after that the fire was out, but the house was a ruin.

I wanted to post about it when it happened because this is the space where I think hard things through, and this was a hard thing. Another neighbor who works at the university sent me a midday email asking who lived in the little gray house near ours; she'd heard there had been a fire. Because she said "near" and not "next door," I thought she meant the little gray house that's kitty-corner from ours, the one that's occupied by an older single woman. When I walked home after my afternoon class I scrutinized that house from the first minute I could see it. No damage to the roof -- maybe the fire wasn't that bad. No damage visible from the front -- must have been confined to the kitchen. No damage anywhere at all that I can see -- must have been exaggerated along the neighborhood grapevine.

And then I turned my head to see my next-door neighbor waiting in her car with tears on her cheeks. The sidewalk was covered in ice, because the temperatures that day had been in the teens and the water had frozen rapidly as it rolled away from the house. I cannot convey to you the utter wrongness of the scene: the vinyl siding melted into sinuous ribbons, the roof with its gaping hole, the windows laid on the lawn like plucked eyes. "I'm so sorry," I gasped, with tears in my eyes. 

I wanted to show you the pictures so we could say together, "No, that is not right." I didn't, because it would have been tantamount to posting my home address on the internet. But it shook me up to realize that the lead picture in the newspaper story was taken from my porch: the best view of the action was from our house.

They were insured; they're rebuilding. They're staying in a hotel so we only see them every now and again, but they seem astonishingly upbeat about the whole thing. Please pray for them, if you are a pray-er.

In this neighborhood where lots are small it could have been much worse than it was. It was a windless day, the fire department arrived quickly and responded efficiently, and so the fire didn't spread beyond their house. Ever since, though, I have wondered about the invisible effects.

My little vegetable garden sits right inside the property line. That's my neighbor's house in the picture there. The firefighters left a fair amount of broken glass in the garden. (Which is 100% fine with me. If you can fight the fire faster by leaving broken glass in the garden, then bring on the broken glass.) I'm wondering more about potential toxins in the soil, though. Burning vinyl is really nasty stuff. Is there toxic residue in the soil now? If I plant vegetables there this year, will I be feeding carcinogens to my children? My compost pile is in the back, also right on the property line. The prevailing wind here is from the west, which means that all winter the wind blew across the fire debris in their yard and then across the compost. I'm thinking that compost is probably destined for flowers only. 

Do you guys have any thoughts for me? I called the county extension office but I haven't heard back. 

I'm having second thoughts about posting this, because it is SUCH a minor concern compared to my neighbors' troubles. But planting season isn't far off, and it's been on my mind. That's really the only spot where I can grow vegetables. I'd be bummed to lose my garden space. I'd be more bummed to feed poisonous food to my family.

Comments

[Kira]

I think you did show us the neighbors' house. And yes, you're correct. That's just not right.
As far as the tainted earth issue, I would totally make myself just that crazy if it were my vegetable patch. I think it's probably okay, but I could also see where you might want to scrape off the top few inches of soil and replace it with some compost from the garden center. Vinyl is nasty. But even if it's all fine, you do have the broken glass to contend with, so it would possibly be for the best anyhow?
So glad your house wasn't damaged, and your neighbors are weathering this well. Life is hard. God is good.

[nancyo]

Wow, that is really sad and I'm glad to hear that they are dealing with it so well. I'll say a prayer for sure.

As for your garden: can you build a raised bed, maybe lined in thick plastic, and put in new soil on top?

[Celeste]

I'm reading that the vinyl gives off a pair of horrible immediately toxic gases as it burns. The first one contains a lot of chlorine. That doesn't sound like a longterm issue. The second one is dioxin which can get into soil but doesn't break down quickly. Wiki says that plants only take up small amounts of dioxins but warns of bioaccumulation in cattle.

You might ask about having your garden soil tested by the agency you called. Think about what you might want to do if the results of your query are poor. Would you want to dig up and replace your garden soil? Or would no remediation satisfy you? You can always get your veggies from somebody else at least for a few seasons and use the gardening time on other pursuits.

Finally sunflowers are great at pulling heavy metals contamination (lead, radioactive isotopes for example) out of soil. Maybe you would like to host a sunflower crop and retest in a year. I wasn't able to tell if they work on dioxin so maybe that's a question you can ask in your call.

I'm very sorry for the stress this is causing you.

[Colette]

If it's truly a concern, have those boys scouts of yours build you a(nother? do I see one in your photo?) raised bed. You can put a liner in the bottom to prevent leeching from the contaminated ground. Buy some black dirt and fill it in. It might be more of an investment and you probably won't be able to plant potatoes or anything else that's got long roots, but it should save you the bulk of the worry about toxins. When's the last time you did a soil test? Those never hurt.

Don't know what to tell you about the asparagus.

[Calee]

This is so apples to oranges. But I'll share anyway. I lived in Downtown Manhattan in 2001. We were told the air quality was fine, don't panic, etc. Then we were added to a health monitoring system that sends me a letter every year to make sure I haven't moved. Five or six years after everything happened, the news came out that the air in my neighborhood after September 11th was the most toxic air on record, anywhere.
I am healthy now but I blew my nose liked we'd been sitting around a campfire for weeks afterwards. I would give the compost to the flowers and perhaps bring in a layer of mulch for your garden plot. I think frozen soil isn't going to absorb too many airborne carcinogens in that short of time, but it might make you feel better to make sure that most of the nutrients are being derived from a new source.

[mary d]

You could probably have the compost and/or soil tested. I think. I'm not sure how expensive that would be, though. Some of the stuff we send for testing is like $25, but some of it is in the hundreds. I think the extension office should be able to help with that.

[Jody]

I join the chorus of people advocating for testing. I don't think raised beds with solve much (because we have raised beds, and the roots go DEEP) but I like the sunflowers/year of rest possibility.

I haven't had the time/energy to garden in a few years so my opinion should be discounted accordingly but I would just WORRY too much to make it worth planting food there this year. Maybe you could plant flowers for cutting and take them to someone who likes flowers on a weekly basis as an offering? I don't know....

[Celeste]

Hmm, it may not be so bad as it looks.

http://www.michigan.gov/documents/deq/deq-whm-hwp-dow-Reducing-Exposure-Home_251917_7.pdf

[Lilian]

oh dear, these are very valid concerns!

On the day my firstborn turned 5 months the houses across the parking lot from our home, in a townhouse community of 70+ houses caught fire, burning 12 units to the ground and damaging three others (there was NO FIREWALL in the attic! the addition of firewall cost us 5k in the next year).

I saw very little of it because as soon as the fire started and smoke was blowing, I put all our photo albums in a suitcase (which I left with my husband in case he needed to flee) and a friend came pick me and the baby up. I didn't want him to breathe any of the smoke.

It was AWFUL to behold the charred remains of those townhouses for the better part of that next year. :( I didn't take photos because I thought it was too depressing and it would violate those people's privacy. I tried to google them just now, but back in 2002 I guess news outlets weren't posting that many photos online. This post brought a lot of memories.

I hope you can find out about the soil soon.