SNOHOMISH – After a lengthy string of bad luck, Irma Caldwell and her family got a small dose of good news Thursday.
Caldwell, 83, lost her house, nearly all of its contents and four pets in a fire on Wednesday. Foxy, a Pomeranian; Shilo, a beagle; and two cats, Britches, a Siamese, and Simba, a calico, couldn’t be found after the fire and are believed dead.
After reading about Wednesday’s fire, a Snohomish woman made the family an offer: a puppy. Her Pomeranian is expecting a litter in mid-May.
“Oh, that is so sweet of her,” Irma Caldwell said when she learned of the offer. “Tell her I’ll love her forever.”
“It’s not like the puppy would replace their dog, because you can never do that, but it fills a gap,” said Julie Anderson of Snohomish, who offered the puppy.
An investigator for the family’s insurance company ventured into the still smoldering ruins on Thursday, and Caldwell’s grandsons poked around the edges, looking for valuables.
Some other bits of good news emerged. A sugar bowl and Caldwell’s late husband’s spittoon were among a few items recovered.
“I’ll have to put a plant in there,” she said of the intact sugar bowl. “This means something.”
Caldwell, her sister Phoebe Barber, 87, and Caldwell’s son Kenny, 52, all lived in the house in the 6800 block of 85th Avenue SE, in the rolling hills west of Snohomish.
The fire started Wednesday morning after Kenny Caldwell left for work and his mother and aunt had gone out for a drive.
Before leaving, he lit a fire in the wood stove, as he does every morning when it’s cold, he said. Everything looked normal, he said.
“I try to keep the house warm, they’re both ailing pretty bad,” he said of his mother and aunt.
The cause of the fire was still to be determined Thursday. The Snohomish County Fire Marshal’s Office was investigating.
The fire was the second at the house this year. Around the beginning of March, a chimney fire broke out near the house’s wood stove, burning that immediate area.
A damage estimate from Wednesday’s fire was unavailable.
“I’ve lost so much,” Irma Caldwell said, sitting in the shade outside the house on Thursday with her daughter-in-law’s coat around her shoulders.
“Pictures of the family back in the early 1900s, gone,” said Caldwell’s grandson Aaron Hennessy, 33.
The two-story house was built in 1910 and has had only two owners, according to Caldwell. She’s lived in the house for more than 40 years and raised eight children there, she said.
Four, including Kenny, were her own and four she adopted from her brother when he was killed in an accident one night in Everett many years ago, she said.
“He was riding with some of those railroad guys and they were drinking and he got killed,” she said.
About 20 to 30 years ago, Barber lost her house in Seattle to a fire. “She lost a dog in that one, now she lost this one,” Kenny Caldwell said.
He said three years ago, a jack fell on him when he was working on a car, breaking his neck and some ribs.
Two years ago, he was hiking with Shilo near the Mountain Loop Highway when he slipped and fell 40 feet down an embankment, breaking his neck again. He was rescued a couple of hours later.
“My dog landed on top of me,” he said.
This February, Caldwell and Barber were rescued when their minivan slid down an embankment. The dogs, Shilo and Foxy, were fighting and were blamed for distracting Caldwell’s granddaughter, who was driving, sending the car off the road. Caldwell broke her back in the accident. Another Pomeranian, named Mocha, died.
If found in the remains, Shilo and Foxy and the two cats, Britches and Simba, will likely join Mocha and several other pets buried on the family’s 41/2-acre piece of land.
After Wednesday’s fire, the Red Cross put the two women up in the Snohomish Inn for two nights, while Kenny Caldwell, who cares for his mother and aunt, stayed with his wife in Lake Stevens.
He found a duplex in Snohomish for the family to rent. They plan to rebuild, he said.
“I’m not gonna leave it,” Irma Caldwell said.
Family members were thankful no one was injured.
Irma Caldwell was in good spirits, considering the situation.
“Did you find any money in there?” she asked the insurance investigator.
“We’re gonna make it,” she said.
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