As backhoes creaked and moved debris in the background, Sam Remeto and her husband picked through the charred remains of their home. 

“Oh look! My bathing suit,” said Remeto, picking up a colorful, soot-stained piece of cloth. “I could go swimming.”

It’s the first time since their apartment went up in flames on Saturday night that the two have ventured into the debris to figure out what they might be able to salvage. 

Remeto’s hands were black with soot and her voice shook as she remembered the night of the fire when she and her husband settled in after dinner to play video games. 

“I smelled something cooking. It was really sweet,” she said. “Our neighbors bake for us all of the time, so I was like ‘Oh. Cool, we’re going to get cookies or cinnamon rolls, you know, maybe a cake.” 

But the smell got stronger and then it started to smell like burning wood. 

“I got up from where I was sitting and I went outside and looked down the balcony. All I saw was white smoke,” she said. “I ran back inside and told my husband that there was a fire.” 

They gathered their fire extinguishers – four between the two of them. 

“We both ran out and then I looked and I saw black smoke. I threw everything, I snatched up my daughter and I ran,” she said. 

Remeto thought of the ammunition they had in their apartment, then of the sporting goods store downstairs with a much larger stash. 

“We ran. We got in our car with no shoes, no jackets, soaking wet and we left,” she said. 

Their 11-month-old daughter, Calliope, was covered in ash and soot. 

“My blonde-haired, blue-eyed daughter was black. She was so covered in soot the only part that wasn’t black was my handprint across her face,” Remeto said. 

As crows hopped around, cawing in the piles of debris, Remeto’s voice dropped. “I’m so glad she’s not going to remember any of it because I’m going to have nightmares for the rest of my life.” 

As she peeled back the compressed layers of her apartment, Sam found a number of her daughter’s toys. But no sign of the several thousand dollars in cash they left behind when they ran out of the apartment. 

“We just got our PFDs, so we put everything in envelopes so we could start saving, you know?’ she said. “We were planning on getting a car. Getting out of this apartment and taking a trip down south to go see my family.”

There are bright spots. She found a blanket that Calliope’s great grandmother made for her. And, their landlord Mike Ward reimbursed them for the month of rent they had just paid. 

“Mike has been a blessing,” she said. 

She pushed her hand further into the debris and pulled out a hunk of crystal, holding it up in the daylight. 

Remeto said she volunteered at a fire department in California for a few years and she’s seen a lot of tragedy. 

“But, I’ve never experienced it. I’ve never had to go into that fight or flight mode before. Especially when it came to my own child,” she said. 

She said she’s having trouble sleeping and eating. “My anxiety is just – every time I close my eyes – it’s all I see. I’m just trying not to think about it,” she said. “It doesn’t matter how trained you are, how prepared you are for disaster. You will never be prepared enough in the moment.”

Right now, the young couple and their daughter are staying at the Aspen Hotel until at least Oct. 17. Then they’ll move in with family until they can find a house for the winter. They had a meeting with the Red Cross on Tuesday and Sam said they plan to open a bank account where they’ll be able to accept donations from the community. 

“It’s so overwhelming,” she said. “I’m so glad this happened in a small, loving community like this.”

Looking ahead

In the days since the fire Mike Ward and his staff have been busy trying to rework some of his other stores in town to absorb the business from the destroyed convenience store complex. 

Ward said he’ll be turning Caroline’s Closet, a Main Street store, into a mini-Quick Shop for now. That means adding stock from Costco and other grocery products. He said Wednesday that he has a cigarette rack on order and will be adding tobacco products soon. 

Also on Wednesday, the Alaska Liquor store took a large delivery of alcohol originally scheduled for the now-destroyed Haines Highway location. Ward said the Main Street liquor store will be expanding its hours too and staying open 7-days a week.