Waterfall fire- 5 years later: Families come out on the other side

Eighteen homes burned July 14 and 15, 2004, in the Waterfall fire, the largest natural disaster to ever hit Carson City.

The pages of the Nevada Appeal were filled for weeks after with the stories of those families left homeless, some of whom only made it out with the clothes on their backs.

Carson City learned about:

• Pediatrician Dr. Kathi Amrhein, then seven months pregnant with her second child, and how in the aftermath, she and her husband, Ron, struggled to find some normalcy for her 2-year-old son while Kathi maintained her practice.

• Businessman Bill Burnaugh, who lost everything, even an irreplaceable gun collection in a fireproof safe inside a fireproof room, but who pined most for his pet cockatoo, R2, that he left behind.

• Doug Kelly, who a week after the fire stood with his hands in bandages, recalling how, with a garden hose, he tried in vain to extinguish the all-consuming blaze that was devouring his everything.

• The Ouilette family, who lived in their mobile home as caretakers at the Quill water treatment plant and were largely forgotten by the city as being victims of the fire.

Now, a half decade later, some families have rebuilt. Other have moved away.

• Sixteen months after the fire, Charles and Karen Schardin moved into their new home at 4370 Timberline Dr., which they rebuilt with the original house plans as a guide.

"It's the same floor plan. We just moved a few walls here and there to give us more space," Charles said recently. "The only thing that was kind of funny was that in some places the doors opened differently or the light switch was moved, and I'd still reach for the light switch in its old place. Some habits die hard."

He said the fire taught him the value of his life.

"Your family and the people you love are important, but we found that a lot of the stuff that we had we did not replace. In the grand scheme of things, they were not that important."

• Al Verschell, now 82, said he wouldn't rebuild, and he didn't. Verschell, former part owner of Tequila Dan's restaurant, ended up staying in an RV in a friend's yard for a while after the fire. Then in a rental home.

"I lost just about everything," he said. "What I got away with was one drawer of important papers, my cat and the cat box."

Eventually, he made his way to Lady Lake, Fla.

"I was living in the rental house and going to Blockbuster every day for movies. I wasn't able to do what I could do with the young crowd in Carson anymore, and I had a friend who was living here in the villages in Florida. I thought I'd try it," he said from his Florida home. "I never should have left. I miss Carson City a great deal. Florida is a horrible place, it's a swamp.

"It's now coming on five years for the fire and four years for me since I left Carson. I would hope that Carson is as good as it always was."

• Norma Best, now 93, lost her home at 3737 Kings Canyon Road. She has no plans to rebuild.

"We're just leaving the ground vacant in hopes that one of our great grandchildren might like to have the property," she said. "We did plant some trees - four different kinds of trees - to make it look a little nicer."

Best is living with her son and daughter in Kings Canyon Highlands now.

"The biggest reason we didn't rebuild was the place was devastated. We were used to having all those huge pine trees, such a beautiful setting. When it all burned up there was no point in our living there. It was too depressing.

"I learned that material possessions are not what's important in life, the human connections with people you love is what's important. All the rest is just stuff."

• Randolph Carlson moved into his rebuilt home at 4081 Kings Canyon Road 13 months after the fire.

He said the fire brought him closer to his neighbors. They even collaborated on the rebuilding of his home.

"I got to know them as part of the process and rebuilding. It was fun," he said.

"We went through the adventure, and now we have a much bigger, much more beautiful house," he said.

• It was two years before Brian and Mary Ann Randall could return to a home at 4441 Timberline Dr.

"It took us a good six months before we could get ourselves together," said Mary Ann. "It took us a while to regroup and then to sit down and think clearly and make up the plans again."

"We lost everything. We did get our family pictures out and some of our papers and things like that, but the rest was definitely burned to the ground," she said.

"It was definitely devastating. It shakes you from the roots. Everything that you think was important kind of goes up in smoke, except it's not really everything that's important, it's just material stuff that can be purchased again."

• Robin and Robert Darney not only had to battle the insurance company when their home burned down, but they also battled the U.S. Army, which demanded they pay $20,000 for their soldier son's gear that was lost in the blaze.

The fire came while he was in between Army training and his permanent duty station. Ultimately, the Darneys prevailed.

For 27 months they moved from rental home to rental home, while Robin toted her four school-aged children, sometimes from Douglas County, into school every morning.

But despite the two-year struggle, Robin said she wouldn't take it back.

"The bottom line on this thing is, it sucked. But if I had to do it all over again, I would. I would not change the journey, because everything that happens to us in life, we learn something from," she said. "Going through something like this really shows you what you are capable of and what your family is capable of. We could have fallen apart, but we didn't fall apart."

• Mark Carter said of the fire, "It's the greatest thing that ever happened to me."

He and his wife, Lynne, rebuilt their home on Denmar Circle just for them.

Now "empty-nesters," Carter said they no longer needed the home in which they'd raised their children. The new dream home is more compact with more outside space for Lynne to work her magic and a veranda that runs around it so they can enjoy the views.

"The strongest feeling I had after the fire was disorientation. I felt like I didn't have roots," he said. "But we're very happy now."

• It took about two years until John and Judy Staub were back in a house at 3666 Kings Canyon Road.

John said the house is a new design. He and Judy spent hours walking through model homes to find a layout that suited them and took advantage of their city views.

"It's funny, I've lived in this house for 27 years, and I always liked the lot but never liked the house," John said. "I thought, there's no good way to keep the lot and get rid of the house, then God figured out a way."

John said if he could change one thing about the fire, it would be that he had five more minutes to go back inside and get the important things he missed when they fled the home.

"The things you can't replace, the kids sports videotapes, the baby books. You get the baby pictures but you don't reach up on the shelf and get the baby book with the lock of hair," he said.

But as time passes, he finds that the memory fades.

"Obviously, time heals," he said, then added with a chuckle. "I thought it was a great way to clean out the garage."