On Monday, October 19, Steve and Ashley had just arrived at their campground in western New York when Ashley saw news online of a fire at their storage facility back in Delaware.
Their unit held household items, furniture, photo albums, Ashley’s wedding dress, and other keepsakes from when they owned a house. These were belongings they had kept when they moved into RV life.
Now, 300 miles away, they needed to find out what had happened.
Finding out from a distance
Steve, a former firefighter in Delaware, checked the call log and saw that the fire was reported two units down from theirs.
He started calling friends in the fire service and eventually reached the incident commander. The commander explained that firefighters had needed to cut open their unit’s door, but most of the belongings looked okay.
That was encouraging news, though Steve and Ashley still wanted to see the condition of their belongings firsthand.
The next morning, they left their camper at the campground in New York and drove the 300 miles back to the storage facility in Delaware.
The first look inside
Steve and Ashley arrived before the storage company had started notifying people. Staff walked them back into the building to take a look.
The power was off. The building was very dark and smelled like smoke. Ceiling tiles and insulation lay on the floor, soaking wet.
At their unit, the door had been cut open, just as the incident commander had described. Water was visible on the floor.
They were told a cleanup crew needed to get into the building before they could move their belongings. They made an appointment to return two days later, on Thursday morning.
They had seen the unit, but they still didn’t know how much they would be able to keep.
Sorting through belongings in the parking area
When Steve and Ashley returned Thursday morning, a crew was working at the facility. For safety reasons, they weren’t allowed to move their belongings out themselves.
The crew helped by pulling everything out of the building and into the parking area. There, Steve and Ashley could go through the items and inspect them.
Everything smelled like smoke, and many items had moisture on them. One dresser had visible smoke damage.
As they sorted through everything, the extent of their good fortune became clearer. Only a few things had to be thrown away.
The photo albums and Ashley’s wedding dress were okay, along with other keepsakes from their former home.
The crew also helped move the belongings they kept into a new unit on the property. That assistance made a difficult job much easier.
Revisiting nearly two years of stored memories
It had been almost two years since Steve and Ashley had gone through the contents of their storage unit. They had almost forgotten some of what was there.
During their time in the RV, they had learned to live without those household items and pieces of furniture. Going through the unit again reminded them of what they had saved from their life in the house.
They were especially relieved that the photo albums, wedding dress, and other keepsakes had survived.
Although some belongings had been damaged, Steve and Ashley knew they were lucky not to have lost more.
What caused the fire
The fire marshal told Steve and Ashley that the fire was caused by a lithium-ion battery in another unit. No one was injured.
With the fire reported only two units away, they were relieved that most of their belongings could be saved. There was smoke, moisture, and some damage to deal with, but the outcome could have been much worse.
An arrival at a campground in western New York had turned into an unexpected trip back to Delaware and several days spent checking and moving stored belongings.
The experience also brought Steve and Ashley back to items they hadn’t touched in nearly two years. They had adjusted to life without those things, but they were grateful that so much—including keepsakes they were glad to still have—had survived.
