Editor’s note: Along with authoring four landmark books on public speaking including How To Write and Give a Speech (4th ed, St. Martin’s), award-winning member Joan Detz runs her own speaker services business. She has written speeches, coached executives, offered media training and taught presentation skills for clients such as Abbott Laboratories, CDC, Siemens, Fox Chase Cancer Center and many more. She has also served as a media spokesperson, appearing often on radio and TV interviews.
A cascade of personal crises prompted this column, which originally appeared on her blog. Let’s put the hive mind to work and wish Joan only good things in 2019!
On June 22, 2018 my condo was destroyed by a building fire. My salvageable belongings were boxed into storage, and I moved into temporary housing. I remain in temporary housing.
That’s the short story.
The long story is that it’s been an eye-opener – and not a good eye-opener, I might add.
The disaster was started by a kitchen fire on a floor above me. Word went out, a cardboard pizza box had been placed on a stovetop. The rest is history.
A long, expensive, stressful, time-consuming, and frustrating history.
Resilience gets me through. Resilience – and a fair bit of stubbornness, I think.
I stood on the sidewalk, taking videos as I watched the smoke pour out. I thought my heart might break as I watched the scene unfold, but that did not stop me from documenting the scene.
As soon as firefighters let me back into my condo, I took videos of water streaming down the walls … photographed the buckled ceilings … recorded the sound of water raining from vents into buckets (honestly, when I closed my eyes, it sounded like a bucolic waterfall in some pleasant woods somewhere – except it wasn’t).
Disaster crews put an abatement process in place, knocking down walls to dry out the space. Much of my office was dumped into black garbage bags.
I’m monitoring the rebuild process. Smooth, it is not.
If you know me well (and many of you do), then you already know how the writer in me would research every stinking detail of the building fire that made my condo unlivable and turned my whole life upside down.
In the months since I was displaced from my home, I’ve researched residential fires. I’ve talked with insurance agents, real estate agents, fire fighters, safety professionals, public adjusters, physicians, and – most enlightening – other victims of residential fires.
Here’s what I’ve learned: Fires happen a lot. They happen far more than you might imagine.
Also, they’re pretty much needless. They never should have happened at all.
True, you’ll hear the occasional dramatic story about a lightning strike, but the culprits are more often mundane: smoking in bed, toasters gone awry, driers gone haywire. And, yes, insurance adjusters know all about pizza box stove fires.
Here’s what I want you to know about fires: They happen fast and move even faster. If you value your life, your family, your pets, your financial records, your medical records (go ahead, just try reconstructing your whole medical history!), your college memorabilia, your books, your grandmother’s portrait, the latest draft of your great American novel … you need a plan.
If you’re self-employed, you REALLY need to think about the consequences of a fire. Your livelihood depends on it.
- Review your insurance and see if you need to upgrade your coverage.
- Get referrals from friends/neighbors/relatives who needed to use their fire insurance. What advice can they give you?
- Keep important documents in a safe. Buy multiple safes.
- Organize client files. Keep them handy in case of a quick exit.
- Backup.
And ask yourself, “If I lost my home to fire tomorrow, where EXACTLY would I go to live/work?” The time to identify options for good temporary housing is now – not when you’re forced to. It took me several tries until I could find a solution that worked.
Final thought:
My previous blog post talked about the injuries I sustained from a hit/run driver back in November 2017. At the time, many of you wrote to express your concern and to send good wishes. Thank you so much. Your caring words meant a lot. I am making a recovery, but the hit/run injuries were serious and still present complications.
Combine the November 2017 hit/run crash with the June 2018 building fire, and it’s accurate to say: Within the past year, I’ve paid a terrible price for actions that were entirely outside my control.
Resilience keeps me moving forward.
Writers must write, and speakers must speak. I’m taking a lot of notes, and I intend to do both.