Tega Cay family can salvage home after fire
Diane Butler and her husband Jeff, son Grant and 27-year-old daughter Alexis spent the morning of March 26 surveying the damage left from a fire at their Tega Cay home and thanking God that Alexis had gotten out of the house safely.
Later that night, Diane spent several hours shopping and buying everything from clothes for her husband to wear to work the next day to facial cleanser, makeup and hair spray. Everyday basics were also on her list, including underwear and toothbrushes.
"You think about everything you use to get ready the next day and you don't have it," Diane Butler said.
The family lost nearly everything they owned on the second floor of their Tega Cay home when an electrical problem in the master bathroom caused a March 23 fire. The fire was put out within 30 minutes, but caused severe damage to the master bedroom. Smoke and water also damaged other bedrooms and the dining room, Diane Butler said.
The family has spent the last few days working with restoration experts to determine what might be salvageable. So far, Butler said that most of Grant's and Alexis' clothing appears to be salvageable, as well as some family photos and most of their kitchenware. Mattresses will have to be thrown away, she said, and two oil paintings she had made when her children were young were also destroyed.
"They are gone. They can't be fixed or cleaned but I still have the kids, and that means more to me than anything in this world," Butler said.
Alexis Butler was sleeping around 9:30 a.m. March 23, after a late night tending bar at City Tavern in Charlotte. She's always been a sound sleeper, her mother said, and the smoke detector in the second floor hallway didn't wake Alexis when it sounded. Alexis didn't wake up until smoke filled the master bedroom where she was sleeping.
She tried to put out the fire with a glass of water that was beside the bed, but quickly realized that the fire was too large and spreading too fast for her to be able to stop it.
Alexis ran downstairs and out of the house, calling 911 first, and then called her mother.
Diane Butler rushed home from her job at Watson Insurance in Lake Wylie to be with her daughter. They watched as firefighters fought the fire and, after the fire was extinguished, while they tore debris from the home in search of hotspots. She credits the Tega Cay Volunteer Fire Department for saving her home from being completely destroyed.
"The residents of Tega Cay and Fort Mill are so blessed to have such wonderful people that volunteer, give up their time, to save our lives and our possessions," Diane Butler said. "They are a volunteer fire department and when we have fundraisers or whatever we all need to support them. The fire chief told me if I lived two miles further, the house would have been a total loss."
Despite the damage to the second floor of the home, it can be rebuilt in about two to three months, Diane said. In the meantime, she and the family are staying with Diane's sister, Susan Grubb, who also lives in Tega Cay.
When their home is complete, Butler already has a new safety plan in place. Smoke detectors will be put in all bedrooms, she said, as well as safety ladders under each bed, to ensure the family could escape in the event of another fire.
"You never think it's going to happen to you," Butler said. "I wouldn't have thought in a million years this would happen to me. You see it n the news, TV, and you think 'Sure, I need to buy a safety ladder,' but you never do. But now I'm going to put one in every bedroom."
This story was originally published March 31, 2009 at 3:18 PM with the headline "Tega Cay family can salvage home after fire."