When the sun came up Tuesday morning, the area surrounding 529 Sunrise Court was dark - black from a night of flames and smoke.
About 6:30 p.m. Monday, an unattended candle left burning in the basement started a fire that swallowed the house and all its contents, leaving its four renters without a home, clothes, books and everything else students use every day.
The four theater students who lived in the house believe they are covered by their parents’ homeowner’s insurance. They’re slowly rebuilding wardrobes, libraries and CD collections.
But now that they’re moving out of temporary hotel housing, they’re preparing to buy renter’s insurance too.
“It never really crossed my mind,” said Jen Taylor, a theater graduate student who lived in the house. “It’s important and something you don’t think about until you need it. I’m covered by my parents’, but it’s not like I’m going to be getting wonderful amounts back.
“In East Lansing, in the student ghetto where we live, it’s really important.”
Dan Kasischke, a State Farm Insurance agent in East Lansing, said fewer than 50 percent of renters have renter’s insurance.
“It’s the attitude of ‘It’s not going to happen to me,’” he said. “It’s a gut-wrenching thing. You think ‘there goes their stuff,’ and they’re thinking ‘why didn’t I buy it?’”
An insurance policy that will replace lost goods will usually cost a renter between $100 and $150 per year, he said. Although students may be covered under their parents’ homeowner’s insurance, it usually won’t replace all lost possessions. Parents’ policies also may have a higher deductible and won’t provide for a hotel stay if a house or apartment is too damaged to live in.
Fire officials estimate structural damage to the house to be about $150,000. Content loss is between $15,000 and $20,000, although the dollar amounts continue to rise as more possessions are remembered, said East Lansing Fire Inspector Jerry Rodabaugh.
Rodabaugh said unattended candles, cigarettes, stoves and extension cords are all common causes of fires in East Lansing.
“Most of the time they throw something on the stove, then the phone rings or they run to the bathroom or they get to level three on their video game,” Rodabaugh said. “They just forget.
“Families know who is and isn’t home and where they might be. In a rental, they don’t really know what anybody is doing. You might have 12 people in the house burning candles.”
Roommates from 529 Sunrise Court reacted properly by calling 911 when they came home to a smoke-filled house Monday, Rodabaugh said. By staying outside the house and instructing firefighters about the layout of the home, they saved workers time that may have saved some of their possessions. It took more than two hours to extinguish the fire.
“We’re trained - we’ll be more than happy to go find your cat or dog,” Rodabaugh said. “We don’t wear those snowmobile suits with air packs for fun - 45 pounds of insulation is a necessity. If you’re not 110 percent sure everybody is out, we’re going to search the entire house. If we’re not sure, we treat it as if somebody is there.
“We’d much rather go in than let somebody else go back in. That’s just another person for us to rescue.”
Picking through the blackened shell of what was their cozy home, Taylor and her roommates are trying to get life back to normal. Performances of the MSU Department of Theatre’s production of “Hamlet” are continuing for one roommate. Taylor has continued to teach classes. With only three weeks to go before her graduate exams, most of her notes were destroyed - but the grade book for her 90 students survived.
Slightly stained pictures have been salvaged, along with a rosary, a favorite stuffed animal and precious disks of homework and files. Donations have poured into the Theatre Department offices, restocking necessities for the women.
Taylor’s cap and gown for her graduation in December went untouched, although the pungent aroma of smoke remains.
“I didn’t want to hang out and be sad in the hotel room,” Taylor said. “I’ve been pretty much walking around and have people I know and don’t know give me hugs.
“I always tried to think that something good would come out of everything. I’m learning so much about the world and myself and everything. What’s important to me now is almost completely different than before it happened.
“Not that I’d do it again, but it’s kind of cool.”
Jamie Gumbrecht can be reached at gumbrec1@msu.edu.
