Dave & Sharon Weber house fire recovery fund

Hi everyone, this is Dave & Sharon Weber.  Sonya & I (the kids) are creating this GoFundMe for them, because we know that they never would.  As everyone in the family are quite aware, tragedy struck the Weber family last month.   Less than a year after retiring and moving to their "perfect" new retirement house, there was a house fire and they lost the house, both cars, motorcycles, dad's workshop, etc.  Pretty much everything.  While the house & cars were insured, there will still be a fair amount of losses due to deductibles, un-covered equipment in Dad's workshop, irreplaceable items, & general out of pocket needs.  There's no telling exactly how much it will be as they still have yet to have all their battles with the insurance adjusters, but they'll probably take a loss of $30K-$50K by my estimates when everything is said & done.  And now dad is suspecting that he'll likely need to hire an attorney to assist with the insurance companies, as they haven't been getting favorable or timely responses from them.  I'll give you the story as to what happened:

On May 19th Dad bought himself a new electric fillet knife and plugged it in to charge overnight in the garage.  (He LOVES fishing)  After a long day of working on some new flower beds with Mom, the folks were headed to bed around 11:00 PM.  While in the house, Dad heard noises in the garage. Believing Mom forgot the garage door open and a critter to be in there, he went to the garage door and peaked in. He was presented with a wall of black smoke and too much heat for their little fire extinguisher to handle. He shut the door, got Mom and Bella and got out of the house.

Even with some quick 911 response, the garage was engulfed by flames and blowing like a blast furnace onto their cars, lighting them up.  By the time fire trucks pulled up, every running vehicle they owned was destroyed but there was still the house to worry about. Firefighters managed to put out the flames, but damage was done to the roof and there were hot spots above the ceiling to be put out. The fire crew managed to move a few things out onto the back porch before they had to rip down the ceilings in the house to put out the attic space.

Multiple departments responded and mom and dad were impressed with the great job they did and how well the fire was handled by everyone there.  

Their auto insurance agent and homeowners insurance adjustor got in about 12:00PM the next day.   After investigations, the Fire Marshal and Fire Investigators were able to pinpoint the cause of the fire was the electric fishing knife.  I was able to search online and discover there was a recall on the rechargeable batteries for the knife due to fire explosion hazard.  I'm sure the Insurance company is very relieved that they have grounds to recover some costs from the manufacturer, but I doubt that'll make things any easier on Mom & Dad.


If this page makes it to anyone outside of the family, I'll give you a bit of background on Dave & Sharon.  Dad has always been a tradesman.  Started his career in automotive.  He taught auto-mechanics at our home town High School when I was a kid, and worked as a service manager for auto dealerships for a number of years.  He eventually transitioned into carpentry, and eventually became a General Contractor and started his own company which we operated for several decades.  In retirement, he is excited to pursue his passion for woodworking and enthusiastically built up his workshop with all sorts of specialized tools, a massive electronic CNC router table, and all sorts of gadgets & gizmos I couldn't even describe.

Mom is a true people person, and has worked in office management, administration, bookkeeping, computer systems training, and most recently, as a Real Estate Agent.  One of her favorite things to do is work in the flower garden and create beauty from nothing but dirt & seed.  When she visited me in Atlanta a couple years ago, I took her to the Atlanta Botanical Gardens and she was like a kid in a candy store.

They attend Church regularly and often donate their time (and blood) to the community.