House fire destroys Winter Garden home

Patricia Oliver is comfortable in her small rental house — it provides a roof over her head and a place to sleep at night.

But it isn’t home.

Her home of 28 years — what’s left of it, anyway — is about two miles away, sitting empty save for two toilets and a water heater. The interior walls have been stripped to the studs, and the only floor is the concrete slab. Loose wires hang throughout. Soot has blackened her porch ceiling and streaked down the outside of her house, which was recently painted a calming green by volunteers with West Orange Habitat for Humanity.

Oliver’s house on Bethune Avenue was destroyed March 1 when a fire started in the kitchen and spread to other areas of the home. She said she turned on her stove to fry some fish but remembered she needed to take out the trash, so she turned off the stove. But even though the dial was in the “off” position, the burner continued heating up, she said.

By the time she walked back into her house, the flames were rising and smoke was filling the house. She ran outside unharmed but panicked when she couldn’t find her aging Maltese, Pierre. Luckily, a firefighter was able to locate Pierre and the cage holding her hamster, Stone, and neither were injured.

A cousin offered to temporarily keep Pierre, and a 5-year-old great-niece is taking care of Stone, who has been renamed Ratty Rat.

“I was fine; just emotionally hurt,” Oliver said.

While the chemicals stopped the fire, they also ruined Oliver’s belongings, as did the smoke and black soot that blanketed and permeated every room in her three-bedroom home.

“Everything was black,” she said. “My entire house was just completely black. My clothes were black.”

Firefighters knocked holes in walls and ceilings looking for hotspots to make sure the fire was entirely out.

FRUSTRATING CONVERSATION

Oliver said her insurance company assigned an adjuster to talk to her; she has issues with the way this has been handled. The adjuster arranged for a company in St. Petersburg to pick up her furniture and try to salvage what it could.

“They took all the good stuff,” she said. “They said I have two TVs — I had four — that were saved. My living room furniture is gone. I had pictures, I had whatnots, little things you pick up through the years, a full coffee table and end tables, my curtains were melted, the chandelier wasn’t salvageable. The dining room and the pictures on the walls were gone.

“My den furniture they saved, and my bedroom furniture they saved,” Oliver said. “They couldn’t save my rug; I had just bought that.”

They were unable to save the furniture in her son’s bedroom as well.

“All my kitchen appliances were gone,” she said. “I had all kinds of stuff in the kitchen, my Keurig, all kinds of blenders and electric fryers. All that is gone, gone, gone. Some of it was my mom’s old cast iron — she had this big roasting pan, and she had a deep-frying pan.”

Oliver received a phone call from the company cleaning her furniture, and she was told her belongings are ready for delivery, but her house is nowhere near ready to accept it.

Oliver currently is renting a home elsewhere in Winter Garden. The money she received from the insurance company is going toward furniture storage and rent costs instead of house repairs.

Oliver had other issues with the adjuster.

“They’re supposed to come up with their prices, they write you a check and you pay the people to do the work,” Oliver said. “She didn’t do it that way. She got Servpro to do the demo.

“She wrote up one estimate of $62,000 and said this is just to start with,” Oliver said. “I said I have another company I want to come in and do the work. I didn’t want Servpro. She said, ‘But I picked Servpro for you.’ She argued and said tear up that check and I’ll issue another. It was $40-something-thousand.”

According to Oliver’s contractor, that is not enough money to cover all the repairs.

“My contractor said, ‘That’s not enough. Your house has to be rewired. They have to have another air-conditioner,’” Oliver said. “He said, ‘The money she gave you won’t even start.’”

Servpro told Oliver she can’t get back into her house until August or September.

“They procrastinated; they just finished cleaning out everything,” Oliver said. “(The adjuster) told them to tear out every wall, so they did. The contractor said that wasn’t necessary. When I called to question her about the check, … she left the company.”

Servpro, the demolition company the adjuster selected to clean out Oliver’s house, removed everything but the water heater and two toilets. Everything else — the ceiling, insulation, walls, hardwood floors, tile, cabinets, sinks, appliances — is all gone.

“Nobody knows the emotion you go through,” Oliver said.

RETURNING HOME

Oliver, 73, is adamant about moving back into her home. She has spent most of her life in her community, growing up on Magnolia Avenue in east Winter Garden and graduating from Charles R. Drew High School in 1968.

She has faith in God to help her through times of trouble. Her son, Darryl Merchant, who lives with her, currently is in a rehabilitation center because of a recent leg amputation. Her car is running hot, so she tries to drive as little as possible, only taking her car to run a few errands and visit her son.

She is trying to be frugal with her money. Her church collected $400 in donations for Oliver right after the fire, but her expenses have far exceeded that amount.

She still must pay her mortgage, insurance and household bills at her Bethune home.

“What little money I had I had to get some clothes to wear and to feed myself and put gas in my car,” she said.

But she knows God is looking out for her.

“I sit here, and I just pray,” she said.