Published Wednesday
November 29, 2000Millers Plan to Rebuild
BY RAINBOW ROWELL
WORLD-HERALD COLUMNISTFor the first few days after the fire, Annabeth Miller never wanted to see this place again. Or smell it. The blackened basement, the piles of debris.
Now that 12 days have passed since their house burned to the ground, Annabeth and her husband, University of Nebraska Regent Drew Miller, have decided this is still their home.
They will build a new house here, fill it with new things. When they decided to live in Papillion, when they chose this lot, they were choosing the place where they would share the rest of their lives.
"This is our house," Drew said. "We designed it. This was our final home."
So they will rebuild. They have already started cleaning up what was left of the old house, hired men with big machines to scrape it into piles and scoop it into Dumpsters. The Millers want to lay a new foundation and get the first floor on before a hard cold spell. If the winter is mild, they will work all the way through.
"We could have the roof on by the end of the year," Drew said. "A lot of things have to go right, but it's possible."
It's still hard to believe they are starting over, that the old house is actually gone. They lived here almost seven years. It's the only house their daughter, Annaclarice, ever knew.
As the firefighters arrived, the Millers didn't think they would lose their house.
The fire started in the garage. Drew got up early that Friday, Nov. 17. It was about 4:45 a.m. when he set a plastic bucket full of wood stove ashes on the concrete floor in the garage. Normally, he would take the ashes outside, but his in-laws were in town from Texas. They were sleeping in a room near the garage, and he didn't want to wake them by opening the garage door.
He discovered the fire about 5:30 a.m. after smelling smoke. The alarms woke his wife, her parents and Annaclarice. Everyone moved quickly outside, and the fire trucks arrived in minutes.
With the fire in the garage and the firefighters already there, the Millers figured the fire would be quickly contained. Drew thought the worst that would happen to the house would be smoke damage. "Nothing's going to happen," Annabeth remembers thinking. "It's going to stop."
But the wind pushed the fire toward the mostly wood house. As they stood watching, the Millers realized the house was doomed, and left.
"We had our 6-year-old," Drew said. "We didn't want to watch it burn down, and we certainly didn't want our 6-year-old to watch it."
Because they hadn't thought it would be so bad, they hadn't thought to grab their most precious possessions. They hadn't thought to put on shoes.
"I was in my slippers that first day," Drew said.
If they could go back in time and save just one thing from the house, they would save Ollie, Annabeth's parents' 2-year-old sheltie. Annabeth's father went to get the dog from its kennel when the alarms went off, but the dog wrestled away and bolted.
The Millers' neighbors and friends immediately rallied around them. One of Drew's Air Force friends, Tom Christie, lent them a car. The three cars in the garage were burned beyond recognition.
"You couldn't tell them apart," Annabeth said, "and one was a Trans Am, one was a Bonneville, and one was a Subaru."
Neighbor Michelle Worcester, who knows a bit about photo restoration, helped the family sift through the ashes to find photographs. She and other neighbors rescued thousands of burned and soggy photos and already are restoring them.
The Papillion volunteer firefighters offered to have a fund-raiser for the Millers, but Drew said they would be fine. They have good insurance - the company delivered a check by noon the day of the fire - and good friends.
"We could probably spend the next year, staying a week with the people who offered."
The Millers have rented a home in Papillion, but don't plan to stay there long.
"Within six months," Drew said, "we should be living here again."
