The Salvage Effort

Thursday was salvage day for my quad. One "quad" consists of four apartments (two upstairs, two downstairs) connected by the same hallway. There are five quads in the building, and mine was the first to have a designated salvage time. The other four quads will have their chance to salvage items this week.

Like most of the residents, I was a little torn about the salvage effort. On one hand, I was excited at the prospect of maybe pulling some antique jewelry and a few other meaningful things from the remains. On the other, I was pretty sure just about everything was a loss, and I expected seeing and going through remains to be a very smelly, unpleasant experience. Aside from the smoke and fire damage, I was certain that water was going to be the main source of damage in my apartment. My apartment saw very few, if any, flames. But six acre-feet of water was dumped on the building within a 24-hour period, and shortly after the fire trucks left, the windows and doors to my apartment were boarded up. Then three weeks went by. I was fully prepared to see not my apartment, but a big, sopping, smelly, moldy, disgusting wreck.

I had seen the pictures of Dallas and Ren's apartment (apartment 38; the one right above mine). I was struck by how eerie the pictures were. Amongst the complete and utter destruction, one white chair stuck out and looked almost pristine. Everything else was unrecognizable.

Thursday morning, I ran out to Big 5 to buy some running shoes (up until then, I had been getting by with just my new flip-flops and my work flats). Almost everyone commented on my bright white new shoes in contrast to the ashen task in front of us. I just shrugged… all shoes have to be broken in sometime, and I feel nerdy when I wear super white sneakers, anyways.


Dallas and Ren went in first. I saw them come out with a few treasures. A box of diaries, badly damaged but perhaps archivable in some way. A clay handprint from a daughter from when she was a child. The infamous white chair from the pictures.

I wandered around the outside of the property and took pictures for a while so I wouldn't get in anyone's way. There was a series of large piles of debris in the courtyard. Most of it was just gray, unrecognizable matter: a mixture of ash, wood, insulation, paint, concrete, dead skin cells, and cat hair. Within the gray matter were various treasures. Unopened bottles of wine and beer and ouzo. A rubber ducky. A refrigerator magnet. A Les Miserables CD. A Jersey Girl DVD. Shower gel. A book with a handwritten inscription from dad, the cover charred to the point of unrecognizability.


Leticia, Jeb, and Lauren went in shortly thereafter. I saw Mr. Vigil excavating loads of clothes and shoes from Jeb and Lauren’s closet. Leticia's electric bass came out of her closet looking damaged, but maybe okay. I was still outside waiting for the boards to be screwed off my windows and doors.

Ren was kind enough to take up the power drill and open up the outside door to our hallway. I was simultaneously thrilled and terrified when the boards came off. The door to my kitchen was open. The first thing I noticed was that the photos on my fridge were mostly still on my fridge. I saw Megan, Biz, and David. I saw dad and me. I saw Lani. I saw Mike. I saw Matt and Navin. It was absolutely thrilling for about a half second.

And then I realized that my kitchen had sunk about two feet below where it should have been. The floor was at about a 45 degree angle, with the low point at my fridge. The cabinets looked to be in a state of tenuous stability. The floor was covered with at least six inches of debris (the same gray matter in the piles outside – there was a Weeds DVD sticking out of this debris). Dinner was, of course, still on the stove. A bottle of olive oil and an unopened package of pasta were still on the counter.


The structural engineer wouldn't let me go through the doorway, but he did take a few steps inside and grabbed a few things for me. The pictures from the fridge. Diana and Jim's STD. A stainless steel water bottle that looked okay. Five bottles of wine.

Then the boards were taken off one of my bedroom windows. Again, I wasn't allowed to step inside, but I was able to stand on a ladder, look in through the window, and give instructions to the guy on where to look for specific items. I was thrilled when he found my jewelry box. The box itself was swollen and the hinges were rusted. It didn't contain anything especially expensive, but it did have a necklace in it, along with some other meaningful things.

This was my bedroom as seen from the window. It looks a lot brighter in the photo than it was in real life. It had ceased to be my bedroom -- it was just a damp, dark, stinky place. The structural engineer was surprised at how much ash and debris there was in my apartment (you can see some of it on my bed at the bottom of the photo).

My Gibson J-185 was pulled out, but it wasn't even close to salvageable. It was cracked badly in multiple places, the strings had completely rusted through, and the mold was already devouring it.


Some other things that were pulled out: Kabul Beauty School, (badly damaged and tossed), a dream diary that went back to 2005 and a real diary that went back to October 2008 (both badly damaged but kept for now), a pair of noise-cancelling headphones that hadn't yet been used (I had bought them for my trip to Japan, now they stink terribly), a small teapot from Japan that Aunt Jane sent me when I was in high school, art from my sister-in-law, cigar boxes from my other sister-in-law, my high school diploma, protective eye wear from chemistry lab, a picture of me and my cousins at my grandparent’s 60th wedding anniversary, a picture of some BJ speech kids at our high school graduation picnic, some cabling.

I asked if he could find my computer (in the hope that there might be salvageable data).
"Look to the left after you enter the living room from my bedroom, and there should be an entertainment stand that at one time had a TV on it. Next to that TV was the computer..."
"What TV? What entertainment stand?"

So I walked away with some things. Most of them I will probably end up throwing away because even the metal things stink with this unique combination of smoke and mold. I really want to piece apart the Gibson and make it into art, but I need to do some more research on what kind of material would properly preserve it so that it wouldn’t be a piece of, um, disgusting living art. So if anyone reading this has some knowledge of how I might be able to do that, please contact me!