Fighting More Than Fire volunteers Shaun Whiteley, Jesse Baust and Chris Mack (Photo by Jay Paul)
For a firefighter, extinguishing a blaze feels like victory. “Afterward, we’re all amped up and excited — we just did our job,” Jesse Baust explains. “Then we turn around, and there’s a family sitting on the front lawn just bawling their eyes out. They’re having the worst day of their life.”
It bothered Baust, a 31-year-old firefighter with Richmond’s Station 10. He’d seen people living in a smoke-damaged house because they didn’t have homeowner’s insurance or money for repairs. He’d seen people who abandoned their house entirely. “They’ll just pick up whatever they have left, and they’ll move on. ... They’ll do whatever it takes to survive.”
Sitting with his wife one day in 2012, Baust said, “I think there’s a way we can do more.”
Thus was born Fighting More Than Fire, a nonprofit that rallies firefighters to repair the fire-damaged homes of families in need.
On a recent Friday, an electric sander whines as Baust and two colleagues install cabinets in a gutted kitchen. For the family living there, the little white bungalow off Warwick Road in South Side was a dream come true — and then destroyed.
John Pettaway inherited the house from his grandfather, making him a first-time homeowner. A few weeks after moving in, his wife was cooking French fries on the stove when the grease caught fire. No one was hurt in the resulting blaze, fortunately, but the kitchen was destroyed.
Few people realize the speed and power of a house fire. “A fire will double in size every minute,” says Baust’s fellow firefighter and volunteer Shaun Whiteley. “Literally every minute. That’s exponential. So take a one-square-foot space, over eight minutes, that’s about 250 square feet of this house.” Eight minutes is the national average response time for urban fire departments.
Fire Station 23 is only a stoplight away from the bungalow. Firefighters probably got water on the fire within three to five minutes of the call, Baust says. Nevertheless, the damage was severe. A soap bottle melted. The walls were blackened. “It was just slam burnt up,” Baust says. Smoke ruined everything inside: clothes, bedding, furniture, the refrigerator Pettaway had just purchased.
Pettaway didn’t know how to explain this sudden change of fortune to his three children, aged 13, 12 and 3. He began calling around for estimates. “I don’t have a lot of money,” he told one fire restoration pro, “but I’m willing to chip in and help work to get my family back in the house.”
Two days later, Baust called and offered to fix the kitchen for free.
“He gave me so much hope. Because I was lost,” Pettaway says. He has spent weeks working alongside the firefighters, scrubbing and repainting the walls.
To restore the kitchen, they had to take it down to the studs, replace the electric wiring, ductwork and plumbing, and install two new windows. They’re improving on the original by widening a doorway and adding more cabinet space. Brazilian Best Granite has pledged to donate countertops and a sink.
Baust and Mack haul new cabinetry for the Pettaways' fire-damaged home. (Photo by Jay Paul)
It’s not hard to find firefighters who have some contracting expertise. Baust, a Long Island native, learned it from his father, a volunteer firefighter who owned a construction company. In the brotherhood of firefighters, Baust explains, older guys often hire and train younger ones in various trades, eventually making them partners in the business or enabling them to start their own. And firefighters have gladly answered Baust’s call to volunteer. “What else am I going to do?” Whiteley says. “Work on my own house?”
Fighting More Than Fire’s first project was in Hopewell. A fire restoration company hired to board up a burned house asked Baust to help the homeless family. The fire had started in one bedroom, and the homeowners had tried unsuccessfully to extinguish it with a garden hose. Baust hesitated for a second, unsure if the fledgling nonprofit had enough money to start work. “Let’s just do it,” he said.
They ended up restoring the entire house. They replaced the siding and the roof; installed new sheetrock; redid the bathroom and built an improved kitchen. And they did it in eight months, for around $10,000, thanks to donations of material and labor.
Baust asks Richmonders who want to support efforts to follow the group’s Facebook page, where they post immediate needs, such as help with painting or donations of furniture, fixtures and building materials. Realistically, he says, Fighting More Than Fire can continue to fix up one house per year in the Richmond area.
But Baust has big dreams. “I think we could push this to be a national nonprofit,” he says. “Because the need is there.” Already he’s heard from fire departments in Seattle and Florida about duplicating the effort.
They’re aiming to hand Pettaway the keys before Christmas. “We’re going to make this house a home for him,” Baust says.
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