Sunderman Fire of 1994

At about 1:30 AM, on the morning of February 17, 1994, my wife and I woke to the sound of a smoke alarm. By the time we got downstairs to get the children out of the house(at the time of the fire they were 16 and 11 years) there were flames already shooting out of the wall behind the wood burning stove. Shortly after we got out of the house, the whole interior of our home turned bright orange. We all got out safely (none of us got out with a complete set of clothes), but with only about a minute or two to spare. What personal property did not either burn or melt, was heavily smoke damaged. As it turned out, we lost about 98% of our belongings.

The fire occurred in the wall behind our wood burning stove. According to the Fire Inspector, we had done nothing wrong. The chimney had been recently cleaned and the stove was installed according to fire code. Code requires a double wall pipe through the wall. It appears that under conditions of continued use a double wall pipe will heat up just enough to completely dry out the interior of the wall and lower it's combustion point. Without knowing, we had been sitting on a "ticking time bomb." We were greatly blessed that we got out safely with no major injuries (my son had frostbite on one foot -- remember this was winter).

As we watched our house burn with all we had inside, we reassured our children (and ourselves) that everything would be OK since we had the "Cadillac" of insurance polices State Farm offered ("Like a Good Neighbor, State Farm is There."). Little did we know that our NIGHTMARE was ONLY BEGINNING. Needless to say, a convicted sex offender would have been a better neighbor than State Farm was to us! The events that transpired with State Farm is a whole story in itself. If you want to know more, don't hesitate to send me an e-mail.

I have had students in previous semesters ask about our fire. Unfortunately, after FINALLY getting to trial in November 1997 (3 plus years after the fire) and with the case still under appeal, the fire is still a current event to my family. With the ability of posting pictures on the Internet, I decided to include several fire pictures and link them to my Web Page.

Livingroom --This is a picture of what remained of our living room after the fire. This is the room directly above the family room, where the fire started. The living room windows appear white because they were blown out by the fire. They had been boarded up by the time this picture was taken.


Kitchen -- This is our kitchen. This room was also above the fire. Since these pictures were taken with a flash, it is hard to look at them and get a true feeling of what the house really looked like. For example, this room and everything in it were BLACK. Again, the window was blown out by the fire and the opening appears white due to the plywood used to board it up. In this picture you can see the damage resulting from heat -- note even the door on the microwave melted.


Family Room -- This is a picture of the southeast corner of our family room. As with the livingroom, the windows appear white because they have been boarded up. On the right of the picture you can still see a desk, on it is the remains of our computer and laser printer. To the left of the desk is the CPU tower stand. You can also see our wood burning stove in this picture.


Family Room --This is a picture of the northeast corner of the family room. If you look real hard, in the left portion of the picture, hanging at an angle is the remains of an antelope head.

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