SEQUIM — Liz Countryman has lived the last several weeks in a haze.
Although the smoky fog that she awoke to find on the afternoon of Dec. 22 has long since faded, the chaos following surviving a fire that consumed her home and all her belongings has been a blur, she said Tuesday.
The family moved into a new home Monday but is still struggling to replace the multitude of belongings that were lost, along with the mobile home they were living in.
Countryman was home with her two sons — Rigo Gomez, 5, and Damian Gomez, 2 — and had put them down for a nap at about 11:30 a.m.
Her husband, Salude Gomez, was not at home at the time, she said.
“We had gotten up really early, so I was going to take a nap, too,” she said.
She stretched out on the couch and awoke with what she thought was an asthma attack.
“It was weird; there was smoke — you could hardly see through it — but it didn’t smell like it,” she said.
“It was more like a gray fog.”
She crawled to her sons’ bedroom, where she found the wall between Damian’s crib and Rigo’s bed aflame.
Damian was crying and pressed flat against the wall farthest from the flames, but Rigo was nowhere to be found, Countryman said.
She grabbed Damian and threw him out the front door.
“I threw him right in a mud puddle,” she said.
“I felt bad, but his little body was hot. He wasn’t burned, but it was hot to the touch.
“I yelled at him to stay outside, and I closed the door so my baby couldn’t get back in.”
She then made a frantic search of the house, crying out for Rigo to make a noise so she would know where he was.
“I was opening cabinets and doors and looking behind the couches,” she said.
“Finally, I heard him coughing,” she said.
“I went in my room, and I saw him under my bed. I had already looked there, but that is where I store all of our blankets, and he had rolled himself up in one.”
She flipped the bed on its side, pulled him out and dropped him out the window but couldn’t get out herself.
“I knew the back door was about 2 ½ feet from my bedroom, but it was all full of flames already,” she said.
“I’m a coward when it comes to fire and getting burned and stuff, but I wrapped my hair up in a blanket and made for it as fast as I could.”
The door handle was so hot that it seared her hand down to the muscle tissue in places, she said, pointing to the still-visible wound.
After making her way outside, she began coughing up soot in a tar-like substance, she said.
“It was like three days before that went away,” she said.
She and her husband are now settled in a house less than a block from the mobile home they were previously buying.
The home was insured, but the insurance was only enough to pay for the cleanup of the site, she said.
“The community has been so generous,” she said.
“I am so thankful to Serenity House [of Clallam County] and to the [North Olympic Peninsula Chapter of the American] Red Cross — both of them have helped so much.”
The cause of the fire is still unknown, she said, because the electrical wires checked out fine.
It might have been a night-light in the plug between the children’s beds, but she said there may not be a way to know for sure.
All of the family’s Christmas presents — which had been wrapped the night before — as well as Gomez’ work equipment for his job as a tree topper, were also lost.
“I couldn’t even look at the house after I got out because I just knew it would all be gone,” she said.
“But I had my babies, and that is all that mattered.”
She said she is also happy because Rigo, who is suffering from kidney disease, has had a good month.
The family travels on a regular basis to Seattle Children’s Hospital for checkups and treatment.
“He is a full-time job, trying to take care of him,” she said.
“We almost lost him about two years ago. We were by his bedside every day for about six months.
“But he seems good this month.”
She said that the family needs everything but that clothing and furniture top the list.
A generous friend gave them clothing for adults, but the children could use some more clothing.
Their sizes are 6T and 2T.
To donate, phone Countryman at 360-461-8101.
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Reporter Paige Dickerson can be reached at 360-417-3535 or at paige. dickerson@peninsuladailynews.com.
