STEVENSON – A plume of smoke and the sound of breaking glass signaled the destruction of Bill and Annette LaCombe’s dream home, one that had teetered on the edge of ruin for more than a year.
The house sat on a bluff overlooking Rock Creek, but in the past year had been threatened by a slow-moving landslide that was eating away at the home’s 2-acre site.
Already having moved the house back once, Bill LaCombe decided to use his skills as a volunteer firefighter and burn the home to the ground.
“I couldn’t let it all slide into the creek, where my kids swim,” said LaCombe, a Stevenson High School teacher in the community about 25 miles up the Columbia River from Portland, Ore. “It would have been easier to walk away, but now we won’t have a huge mess in the canyon.”
On Saturday, LaCombe took a final walk through the home where he and his family had lived for more than eight years, before starting a series of fires throughout the house.
Geologists believe a storm activated the slide. In January 2006, the community helped the LaCombes move the house 200 feet from the expanding canyon.
Burning the house seemed the best option since the ground around the area was no longer stable.
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