To make a long story short, a fire in my mother's fireplace kindled a larger, uncontrolled fire in the chimney which spread down into my brother's room (the chimney runs up through his closet). Most of the house was saved from the damage of the fire, but was touched by smoke and/or water. The demolition of the damaged sections of the house has begun today, and reconstruction will begin as soon as that is finished. I spent this weekend and two weekends ago cleaning out not only my room and my possessions, but also those in my brother's room because he is in Buffalo and hasn't even been in the house in months, years since he's spent the night. I worked on cleaning out all of the burnt insulation and scattered/burned items. It wasn't as difficult as going through my room, even though nearly nothing of mine was damaged. I think the anticipaton, not knowing what was damaged and what wasn't, was the hard part: i.e. my artwork. This was around a month ago now, and it looks like my part in this dance is mostly done.
Before we had my brother's room completely done, I took some photographs of the objects that I thoughts were interestingly damaged, such as melted stereo equipment and street signs. My brother asked that I post them for him to see. I don't have any photographs of his damaged artwork, save for pottery on a shelf, but our mother has some images I captured on her camera.
Here you go Matt.... I hope you handle it well. I tried to show things well, even though this is going to be hard for you..... It's kind of a good thing you weren't there before we began to clean things up. I don't think you would have been able to handle it. It was difficult for me. I hope my photos help paint a clearer picture for you....
