Log in Subscribe

A house destroyed, a life altered, a spirit reborn

Dan Hust - Staff Writer
Posted 9/16/14

Robin Solvang feels sad, grateful and embarrassed, all at once, while looking at the burnt hulk of her former Cochecton home.

“It's been a very interesting experience,” she muses.

This item is available in full to subscribers.

Please log in to continue

Log in

A house destroyed, a life altered, a spirit reborn

Posted

Robin Solvang feels sad, grateful and embarrassed, all at once, while looking at the burnt hulk of her former Cochecton home.

“It's been a very interesting experience,” she muses.

Lightning struck her house on July 2 amidst a series of fierce thunderstorms that flash-flooded nearby Jeffersonville and Youngsville.

The bolt blasted through the roof and burrowed deep into the 1902 farmhouse, immediately setting it ablaze.

Firefighters - despite being beset by floods and evacuations elsewhere - responded within 15 minutes, but the home's balloon construction gave the flames endless spots to hide and lick away at the old timbers.

Robin was not at home when the fire broke out - though she was supposed to be.

“Marcus, my barn cat, saved me,” she relates matter-of-factly.

He had gotten into so many catfights that Robin had taken him to her West Village apartment, where he slowly acclimated to life in New York City.

“I was supposed to come up that Wednesday [of the fire] for the [July 4] holiday,” Robin recalls. “But then Marcus started bringing up hairballs, and I wound up missing the bus.”

A fire investigator told Robin the lightning bolt likely would have killed her, had she been home.

Instead, she was two-and-a-half hours downstate when she got a call from a neighbor, caught a later bus, then drove from the station to the spot where she'd long rounded a corner to happily spy her home with the white siding and yellow shutters.

The sight that greeted her was of burnt wood, a collapsed roof and an utterly gutted interior.

“It was eerie, because when I drove up, there was no one here,” she says. “I was like, ‘Well, what do I do now?'”

Friends and neighbors quickly arrived and began a laborious cleanup process that continues to this day.

The months since, not surprisingly, have been difficult for Robin. She's had to move from place to place, only finding a rental house in the past few weeks.

She's had to figure out how to care for her two alpacas and a pygmy goat in a barn that no longer has running water or electricity - both previously supplied by the now-destroyed farmhouse.

And she's had to work closely with the insurance company, whose payout may or may not cover the cost of Robin's desire to replace her 112-year-old home with a lookalike.

“It would be wonderful to rebuild it the way it was,” she acknowledges, “but there are going to be some tough decisions to make.”

All the while she's also maintained her full-time dental hygienist job in the city and a part-time one at the Center for Discovery.

“I've been keeping moving, but I'm kind of scared when I'm going to ‘crash,'” she confides.

Robin was a volunteer in the 9/11 World Trade Center recovery effort, and she's had nightmares that combine the smokey Twin Towers with her flaming house.

“This was kind of my Ground Zero,” she relates.

Plus, she lost her art studio and most of her paintings in the fire.

Yet Robin admits to being somewhat embarrassed, simply because after all that she and prior owners put into preserving it, this former heart of the 400-acre Just Farm fell so quickly to a freak act of nature.

“Why didn't you hit the tree?” Robin has found herself wondering to the sky. “Why on my watch would you do this?”

But it hasn't all been a horror. Far from it, in fact.

“I've made some very wonderful community ties to neighbors and friends,” Robin affirms. “It's that human connection.”

Friend Joan Glase helped her with the insurance complexities. Next-door neighbor Betty Baker made a point to check in daily. Dottie Schlegel and Katie's B&B in Fosterdale ensured Robin had a place to lay her head at night. Rich at Delaware Valley Farm and Garden in Callicoon provided her with a water tank, boots and other equipment to care for her barn and pets.

And then there are the emergency responders, who rushed to her aid when so many others needed it at the same time.

“During that huge entire storm, there were eight companies responding,” she recalls. “It must have been a horror of a day for those first responders. We're so very fortunate to have them.”

But life has since moved on, and Robin with it.

“I call it a ‘new reality',” she explains. “I've been looking at this with a strange detachment.”

Ironically, that detachment has allowed her to take the critical next steps to rebuilding something to which she was very much attached.

“It's an opportunity,” Robin nods. “Sometimes hitting bedrock gives you a rude awakening of what's important to you.

“You find out how little you can live with.”

Comments

No comments on this item Please log in to comment by clicking here