Sarah (Vickie’s adult daughter), Vickie, and Nathaniel, in a picture posted on the GoFundMe site. (Photo from GoFundMe site)
Above are the remains of Vickie Eggleston’s bedroom; below are her washer and dryer. (Facebook photo)
Vickie Eggleston began April 22 as a normal day just like any other. She woke up in her West Creek Road home and saw her 10th grader, Nathaniel, off to school. Her dogs, Lucy and Beethoven, milled around. Vickie was getting stuff done in the house – putting away her winter clothes for the season – when a fire broke out. By the time her son returned from school that afternoon, the family had lost everything they owned.
Fire investigators later determined a faulty space heater was to blame. Vickie said, “It was an electrical heater. I discovered that you can walk in anywhere and buy an electric heater but that doesn’t mean it’s safe to use.” (She added that she has since learned that ceramic heaters are the safest.)
Once she found the flames, Vickie tried to smother them with a blanket. In an interview this week, she tearfully recounted, “I really thought I could put it out, it was little and I thought I could put it out. But that’s not the case, not at all. It can get very big very fast.”
She got a fire extinguisher, but that wasn’t enough to put out the blaze. She left and came back for another go at it, but by that point the flames had grown out of control. She tried to enter the home, but said, “It was like midnight, you couldn’t even see through it and I couldn’t even get back down to where the fire was.” Before the house was completely engulfed, Vickie managed to coax the dogs out and was lucky enough to be outside and halfway down the sidewalk by the time the windows blew out.
Although, as WBNG reported, firefighters from Candor, Newark Valley, Campville, and Owego all responded to the scene, ultimately the house was a total loss.
Needless to say, the aftermath of such a tragedy has been difficult. Just figuring out where to start over has been challenging. “It’s really overwhelming because you walk into Wal-Mart and you say, ‘I don’t know where to start because I don’t have anything.’” She added, “My heart aches more for my son than anything else because he lost everything. I will say Newark Valley Central School District was absolutely incredibly amazing to him.”
Vickie had insurance on her home, so that helped some – but it turns out that the insurance didn’t cover as much as she’d hoped. The coverage will provide enough for the Egglestons to purchase a prefabricated home, but because it didn’t cover demolition of the damaged structure, much of the money that would have gone toward replacing items in the home instead had to be spent on demolition.
Currently, Vickie and her son are living in a camper on their property, although they don’t have electricity yet. Over the past month, Vickie has spent a lot of her time dealing with insurance companies and banks. She said, “People really, really need to go over their policies very closely. You really don’t know what you’re going to need until it’s all gone.”
To help the Eggleston family cover what insurance doesn’t, Vickie’s long-time friend and distant relative Krissy Keener has organized a June 7 benefit at Poor Shots, on West Creek Road in Berkshire. Keener said, “I just felt so bad, I just wanted to do something.”
Thanks to a large number of donated items, the benefit, which starts at 11 a.m., will feature a Chinese auction, as well as a bake sale, a couple of bands, a 50/50 raffle and more.
For anyone interested in helping out but unable to attend the benefit, there is a GoFundMe site setup for online donations at www.gofundme.com/qa76ggaa.
