Family homeless after fire

A Bascom couple and their three daughters lost almost everything they own when fire destroyed their home Saturday evening.
Michelle and Travis Bruner, and their girls — ages 13, 10 and 2 — left their home on Hummingbird Lane around 3:30 p.m. Saturday with a full afternoon of college football on their minds.
They’d watched the Florida-Florida State game on TV with family members and were headed to a friend’s house just before 7 p.m. to watch Georgia play, when they got the shocking news that their house was on fire.
They raced home to find the block house fully engulfed in flames.
Jackson County Fire Marshal Chuck Sawyer said the fire was fully involved by the time firefighters from Jackson County Fire Rescue, and volunteer firefighters from Malone, Bascom, and Lucy, Ala. were alerted.
“It was a block house with a wood roof, and it was already so involved it was hard to control the blaze,” Sawyer said.
“There are no fire hydrants out there, so we had to rely on tanker shuttles from Malone. It took over 10,000 gallons to extinguish it,” he continued. “The tankers hold from 1,000 to 2,000 gallons each, so there were a lot of trips back and forth to Malone, and we used the water carefully and sparingly because we certainly didn’t want to run out.”
Sawyer said the fire is under routine investigation by the state fire marshal’s office, but he did share some preliminary findings.
Arson is not suspected, he said, and the fire appears to have started in the northwest portion of the house, an addition to the structure. While the cause had not yet been established, “we can’t rule out electrical,” Sawyer commented.
The American Red Cross assisted the family with their immediate clothing needs. The house is insured, but the family must essentially start over.
“In the blink of an eye, 14 years were gone,” Michelle Bruner said. “We’d lived there about six years, and practically everything we’d accumulated over the course of our lives together was in there. We were lucky enough that we took our jackets with us, so we had those, and the Red Cross gave us a card that we were able to use to buy socks and some other basic clothing items.”
A special account has been set up for the family at First Capital Bank, as the “Travis or Michelle Bruner Benefit Account.” Because they have no storage space for other kinds of contributions, cash donations would be the most appropriate way to assist the family at this time.
They will be staying with family members as they try to rebuild their lives.
The family sorted through the rubble Sunday, pulling out a few precious pictures that survived the fire. One of the most treasured finds was the sonogram image of their youngest daughter, along with some pictures of a baby shower given before her birth.
Among the most painful losses, Michelle said, was a portrait her husband had commissioned for her while he was away serving his country.
He took one of their wedding pictures with him when he deployed to Iraq in 2003. While there, he hired an artist to paint a portrait using the photo. Travis Bruner, who is now a local recruiter for the National Guard, sent the portrait back home to his wife on their anniversary that September.
Despite having to start from scratch now, Michelle Bruner can still look on the positive side of their situation.
“It’s hard, starting all over,  we don’t have anything, but we have each other. We’re Christian people and we know God was watching out for us. We’re so fortunate, really. We weren’t home when it started,” she said.
According to the neighbors, the fire started suddenly and spread rapidly.
“A neighbor told us that when he drove by around 6:20 that night, he saw nothing amiss, but then suddenly, there was a big cloud of black smoke,” Michelle said. “By 7 p.m., it was burning to the ground. Our girls slept in that part of the house, so we’re grateful that we weren’t there, that it didn’t start at 2 a.m. when everybody would have been in bed.”
Michelle Bruner said she and her husband are focusing their attention on reassuring the children as they face the challenges ahead.
“All we can do is comfort them, and try to keep things on a normal schedule, and as normal a life as we can for them,” she said. “I hope to have them back in school by Wednesday, because on top of everything else we don’t need them falling behind.
“We’ve got a lot to do; you don’t even really understand what you’re missing until you go looking for it, but we have to keep moving forward and onward as a family.”