CAMANO ISLAND – The call came at 3:55 a.m.
The woman on the other end of the line was crying.
“I don’t know how to tell you this, but your house is completely on fire,” Karla Verbarendse remembers her future neighbor saying.
She walked outside her rental home with her husband. They could see the sky glowing.
“I said, ‘No, God. Make it be the well house, make it be the barn next door. Make it be anything but the house,’ ” Mark Verbarendse recalled.
It wasn’t.
Flames swallowed the 9,000-square-foot house he had spent years designing for his family. They had been planning to move in within a month.
Nearly everything was gone, from the slate roof shingles salvaged from a building in Pennsylvania to the fireplace hearth Karla’s father had crafted from a maple log he had saved for more than 30 years. Only the scorched foundation, one wall of the garage and a dream as tattered as the home survived.
But that was enough.
The Verbarendses are rebuilding on the same 15-acre waterfront pasture where their home was destroyed in January. The Earth Liberation Front, an environmental terrorist group, claimed responsibility for the fire in a note spray-painted on a pink bedsheet found outside the house.
“It’s really disheartening,” said Mark Verbarendse, owner of ENI, a site work and utility contractor. “It just makes you really question how someone could do this. You think about that process – what someone thinks about. How does that hatred get so strong that you could destroy what someone worked a lifetime for, for your own personal agenda? It’s a terrorist thing.”
The FBI, Island County Sheriff’s Office and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives are still investigating the fire. The arsonist has not been caught.
In the days after the blaze, Karla Verbarendse, a stay-at-home mom, grieved over the loss of the home where she had planned to raise her four children and grow old with their father. She stood over its smoldering remains and cried.
Mark Verbarendse planned.
He bought a 2,200-square-foot manufactured home and moved it onto the property. Next came his family, several “No Trespassing” signs and two rowdy German shepherd dogs. The youngest, born the day after the fire, is named Cinder.
“She came out of the ashes,” Mark explained, as Cinder chased their other dog, Sweet, around the dirt yard.
Karla and Mark say they’re not necessarily more fearful than used to be, but they are more guarded. Unplanned guests are no longer welcome. All visitors must have identification.
And the Verbarendses aren’t the only ones worried.
The threat of ecoterrorism has led the Building Industry Association of Washington to encourage homebuilders to hire 24-hour security guards and install security cameras. In light of several arsons and attempted fires claimed by ELF, the association is offering a $100,000 award for information leading to the arrest and conviction of any ELF members who have sabotaged homes in Washington.
“They’ve become more extreme, more strident and more determined to take their little war and bring it where everyone will see it,” building industry spokeswoman Erin Shannon said. “Not enough people were paying attention when they spiked a tree or sabotaged logging equipment. But, by God, you burn down a home in an urban area, and people will pay attention. The escalation will likely lead to human casualties in the future – be it an accident or deliberate.”
The Verbarendses’ fire made ecoterrorism seem like a viable threat for Camano Island builder Darrel Potter. After 30 years in construction, he changed the way he selects projects. He now avoids building on secluded lots.
“I felt untouchable on the island for that kind of thing,” said Potter, owner of Landmark construction. “There’s good people on the island. We’ve run into very few negative people. So it shocked me.”
The shock has pretty much worn off for the Verbarendses.
The scraping of bricklayers’ trowels and the hum of construction equipment have replaced the crackling fire and sobbing of six months ago.
They plan to move into the house in February or March – 14 months late. The salvaged slate shingles that hung on the first home have been replaced with shingles from a local broker. The Verbarendses are still searching for a hearth to replace the one crafted by Karla’s dad.
It’s not what they wanted.
But it’s enough.
Reporter Kaitlin Manry: 425-339-3292 or kmanry@heraldnet.com.
Michael O’Leary / The Herald
Little remained of the Verbarendses’ nearly completed home after the fire, for which the Earth Liberation Front claimed responsibility.
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