Recovery from the Christmas Fire: More Photos (St. Johnsbury, Vermont)

Fires continue to ravage the Northeast Kingdom of Vermont, to the point where we need our own version of the Three Little Pigs story ... because the buildings have wood frames, even when the outsides are brick or stone, and we continue to be vulnerable. Saturday night a home in Concord, Vermont, was lost; Sunday, oddly, one of the commuter buses burned.

Today Philip C. Marshall (http://www.panoramio.com/photo/18438727?tag=US_VT_St_Johnsbury) generously gave permission for use of his St. Johnsbury photos, and here is one of the 1879 building -- Bruno Ravel's building, where his parents long operated the Landry Drug Store -- before the Christmas 2012 fire struck.

photo by Philip C. Marshall

And here are some pix that the construction crew allowed me to snap last week: reconstructing the brick frame for the shop windows; the room where the drugstore used to be (see the tin ceiling?); and the back exterior.

Progress indeed ...

Readers of COLD MIDNIGHT: Claire and Ben did not climb this structure (although the author has, from the inside); the Saturday night activities on Railroad Street in 1921 made it far too risky. But it will reappear in the 2014 book I'll be writing, The Fire Curse.

Rebirth after the Christmas Fire, St. Johnsbury, Vermont

Slowly but surely, St. Johnsbury's "1867 Block" (owned by Bruno Ravel) is rising from the ashes of the structure fire last Christmas; you can see the burned building HERE.

And the news story on the fire, from Dec. 24, 2012, is HERE.

I'm watching closely, because (a) I'm so glad to see the structure rise again, (b) I have a lot of respect for Mr. Ravel, who has long been a downtown landlord who cares about his buildings (this one wasn't insured -- but he's having it rebuilt anyway, out of his own pocket and with some help, and (c) it's part of the "back story" for the novel I'll be writing in 2014, THE FIRE CURSE.

Research for Another Novel: "The Fire Curse"

Historical fiction requires years of research for most of us who write it, and the closer we get to the time of writing, the more "picky" we get about details we need -- the length of a skirt, the exact movie being shown, a song being shared.

I'm still in the "wide open" stage of preparing for a book I've tentatively titled The Fire Curse. Recently the Fairbanks Museum & Planetarium in St. Johnsbury, Vermont, closed for two weeks to allow a team to install a "fire suppression system" -- the sensors, electronics, pipes, and pumps that can fight a structure fire before it takes lives. The museum's staff kindly welcomed me to look behind the scenes, and a couple of installation crew members paused for a few minutes to answer some questions that I had. I won't give you details now --- but I wanted to share these photos, because they show something you'll never see again: the moveable scaffold that the installing team created, to slide along the balcony railings upstairs, giving the crew access to the vaulted ceiling of the museum, where sensors and spray nozzles needed to be carefully place. Can you spot the antlers, polar bear, and other museum artifacts here and there?

From the Ashes of a Christmas Fire

On December 23, 2012, a massive six-alarm fire erupted in a downtown building in St. Johnsbury, Vermont. The fire in the "1879 Building" destroyed a much-appreciated florist shop, the homes of at least seven people, and what was once the storefront of Landry Drugs, most recently operated by the French parents of Bruno Ravel, owner of the structure. With his parents' deaths relatively recent, and many of the furnishings of their lives also destroyed by the fire, Bruno's losses were enormous. And the first news stories of the fire declared the building a total loss: http://www.burlingtonfreepress.com/article/20121224/NEWS07/312240021/St-Johnsbury-fire-ruled-accidental

Today, though, with Bruno's savings and much assistance from state and local agencies, rebuilding of the structure is underway. Palmieri Roofing erected scaffolding, and at least four of the roofing company's workers were on site as I snapped this photo.

My novels often include structure fires in them (I've been there, done that -- my home burned in 1984). What intrigues me the most is the courage shown as people choose to rebuild lives, homes, and structures from the ashes. A high-five salute, then, to St. Johnsbury and to Bruno Ravel and the people pitching in -- on this gray late-January day, you point to what matters.

UPDATE: See March 17, 2013, post, as the structure is rebuilt. Yes!!