Family Loses Dream Home To Fire
SPOKANE — A Spokane Valley couple escaped the Valley View Fire with nothing more than their dog, their computer hard drive and their iPods, but everything else, including their wedding rings, was left behind.
“The view is forever changed,” Bob Maughan said.
On Monday evening Sherry and Bob Maughan walked through the charred remains of their house for the third time. Every time they walked through the house it seemed unreal.
“We’ve moved through the last few days in a sort of fog, a sort of daze,” Bob’s wife Sherry said.
Even though they have already toured the damage they are having a tough time grasping the reality of their lost home.
“As time goes by you realize you’re going to have to face it,” Bob said.
When the Maughans evacuated Thursday evening, they never thought it was the last time they’ve see the home they hoped to spend the rest of their lives in.
“You look at each other, what to take? What’s important? You can’t get your mind around it so you just get in the car and go,” Bob said.
Left behind somewhere in the black soot and mangled metal are the wedding bands the Maughans exchanged 27 years ago.
“My wife had taken her wedding rings off to golf, somewhere over there, and I had taken mine off to be resized and it was on the dresser and so we don’t have those but that’s not going to keep me from looking,” Bob Maughan said. “I’m going to dig through.”
While almost everything is unrecognizable, there are a couple of things that miraculously survived the flames.
“Holy cow, where do you suppose they found that?” Bob Maughan said “I have no idea who found this but it’s the Joseph from the nativity set I had as a child.”
The figurine was sitting next to the last standing pillar in a pile of rubble, and just as the figurine withstood the fire, so will the Maughans.
“We built it once, we can build it again,” Bob Maughan said.
Both the Maughans returned to work on Monday, and they say it’s nice to get back to some form of normalcy. They also said they have a new appreciation for things as simple as the familiar pictures at their desks.
