WILLOW -- Musher Jan Steves unexpectedly lost her 31-year-old son, Tyler, to a heart attack June 5.
Nine days later, she was sitting in Tyler's Seattle condo, staring out the window in grief, when the Sockeye fire sprang to life and bore down on her Willow home, her cherished sled dogs and her partner, Bob Chlupach.
The dogs got out. The house was destroyed. The fire burned an estimated 55 homes in Alaska's dog mushing stronghold.
Steves flew back June 15 with no choice but to focus on the blackened aftermath.
"It took me away from a lot of the grief in dealing with his death but it also prolonged it," she said Friday, taking a break from cleaning up. "It's like a double whammy."
Now the couple is living in a donated motor home, clearing away the wreckage and starting, slowly, to rebuild.
A 10-day-old grass-roots group promises to help.
People helping people
As fans from around the world raise money for displaced mushers, a group called Willow Community Rebuild Project has rallied a local volunteer force of about 150 people and major amounts of material and equipment to build homes for at least seven families devastated by the fire.
One of the first is going to Iditarod finishers Chlupach and Steves.
"We're real open to it," Steves said. "I suppose we're all in disbelief."
Given that government disaster response often takes weeks or months, many in Willow have taken to saying, "We'll believe it when we see it." But, referring to the surprising fact that people are actually going to show up Monday to build a house, ?Chlupach repeated it with a smile.
We can fix this
Scores of businesses have donated equipment, time and materials to the Willow Rebuild effort, according to the group's logistics guru, Krista Gray Fee, a dynamic 40-year-old choreographer who runs a circus school in Palmer.
Fee started the group with her mother-in-law, Wasilla's Helen Hegener, a prolific Alaska writer with a specialty in sled dogs, who has connections in the mushing community.
The idea came to Fee as she helped water sled dogs taking refuge at Martin Buser's Big Lake kennel during the first few days of the fire. She spotted Justin and Jaimee High, mushers who had just lost the home they were rebuilding on Serenity Drive after a December fire destroyed their first one. The Highs live next door to Steves and Chlupach.
Justin High looked despondent, Fee said. Jaimee High is pregnant and due next January. Justin muttered he had failed his family.
"In that moment I looked at him and said, 'No, you didn't and we can fix this -- so what will it take to fix this?'" Fee said. "That's where it started. Just one house. One family. That moment."
Dream home
High promptly started work on a temporary cabin that's now on his property and the family became the first on the list for assistance from the Willow Rebuild project.
"Other people started hearing what we were doing and it just exploded," Fee said.
Crews from the group plan to start debris removal and foundation breakup at the High property and Chlupach and Steves' place on Monday, she said. A single father with three children is also high on the list.
Companies are donating everything from the use of pilot cars and tractor-trailers to doors and tile to contractors for construction supervision, Fee said. Someone donated an entire unfinished cabin. Build crews expect to be able to put a house up every three weeks or so.
She estimated the value of a basic home at $30,000 to $75,000.
According to a post Fee made Saturday on Facebook, the group is also looking for veterinary care as well as campers or motor homes for displaced families, some who may time out of hotel benefits and need to sleep in tents. Other needs: generators, computers, phones, laundry or cooking stoves.
Fee, who called herself a "rainbows and unicorn person," said everything may not work out as she envisions it now. But her dream is that fire victims will walk into a new furnished house with art on the walls and dishes in the kitchen.
"They can just go, it's over, it's done. I can relax," she said.
Aid from abroad
One of several simultaneous grass-roots giving campaigns in the mushing community originated June 14, the day the Sockeye fire sprang to life.
Rob Cooke, a 48-year-old Arctic researcher and musher originally from Worcester, England, got on Facebook and saw the terrifying prospects faced by Iditarod friends in Willow including Chlupach, Russ Bybee and Lev Shvarts, whom Cooke stayed with while he ran Yukon Quest qualifiers in 2011.
"That's probably why it felt so personal to me, because I know so many people in the area," he said Thursday from Whitehorse.
Cooke began posting updates when mushers evacuated safely. Then he and some friends decided to generate a Facebook group built around an auction of mushing-related items to raise money for homeless mushers. "Willow Fire Support Group UK" was born.
"Chatting between us we decided an auction would be a good idea," Cooke said. "It was intended to be among friends in the U.K., 50 people and $1,000 dollars. It just took off."
As of Friday morning, the group had more than 5,000 members and had raised at least $10,000 but bidding didn't close until Friday at midnight. The auction was set to end with an appropriate last item: a red lantern awarded for a last-place Iditarod finish.
Other donated items included Iditarod and Yukon Quest memorabilia, posters, jewelry -- one bracelet with beads made from Cooke's dogs' fur -- and paintings by artists including "official Iditarod artist" Jon Van Zyle. Lance Mackey donated an autographed book, then promised a T-shirt he wore while holding the book, provided it remained unwashed. That was going for $1,000 on Thursday. Willow musher Lev Shvarts donated his Iditarod dog sled.
All proceeds will go to the Willow Dog Mushers Association, Cooke said. That group offered to share with other fire victims.
"People have been unbelievably generous," he said.
Community spirit
Chlupach, one of the mushers Cooke kept an eye on as the fire blew up, on Friday called the aftermath of the fire "like dropping an atom bomb without the trees falling over."
The Steves and Chlupach sled dogs joined hundreds rescued from the hard-hit Serenity Drive neighborhood where other mushers including the Highs and DeeDee and Mike Jonrowe lost their places too.
Piles of mattresses, melted four-wheelers and large household debris lined a corner before disposal Friday. Acres of charcoal-black standing spruce spikes surrounded flattened homes. Hot spots still sent up plumes of smoke despite a sprinkle of rain. The "butt ugly" trees are coming down, Steves said.
"It's a reminder, a blatant reminder," she said. The fire-weakened trees also pose a danger, foresters say. Rain and wind could send them toppling.
Steves said friends from all over have contributed everything from gift cards and a new barbecue grill to potted mums that brighten a road sign amid the bleak terrain. Two men came and cut down a bunch of trees already. Friends took care of their dogs. A neighbor kept an eye out for trouble and chased off some teenagers early one morning.
Fire crews from Montana and Idaho told them they'd never seen the kind of community spirit that emerged in Willow, Steves said.
"It's so cool because everybody's looking out for everybody," she said.
How to help:
Spenard Builders Supply in Wasilla is taking financial donations for the Willow Community Rebuild Project. Customers need to make it clear they're donating to the Willow Rebuild project.
The Matanuska-Susitna Borough is keeping a list of people who want to volunteer as part of larger fire recovery efforts. To put your name on the list, email disastervolunteers@matsugov.us.
The state is opening disaster assistance centers at the Willow Community Center and Houston Middle School starting Monday through Wednesday. The centers will take applications for state individual assistance programs and provide information from other state and nonprofit agencies. Applicants who wish to apply for state assistance by phone can call 855-445-7131. The deadline to apply is Aug. 18.
The Alaska Division of Forestry will hold a "Firewise" presentation at 7:30 p.m. Wednesday at the Willow Community Center.
Borough emergency officials remind the public a statewide ban on fireworks remains in effect and the only allowable open flames in the Mat-Su are propane gas grills and backpacker stoves.