Spring Growth Cheers Returning Fire Victims

Behind the yellow caution tape and the chain-link fence, in front of the gaping dirt pit that once was the basement, spring has come to the Hemsing yard.

Green, thorny shoots are pushing their way up from the blackened canes of the decades-old rosebushes.

For Rita Hemsing, it’s reason to rejoice. She feared the bushes had not survived the wildfire that destroyed the family’s home.

“I’m going to go out there and do a lot of trimming and clipping. I’m going to give them a chance because I really want them back,” she said.

A year ago, with the Cerro Grande fire ready to roar out of nearby Los Alamos Canyon, Rita and Billy Hemsing and their four youngest children fled their home of 23 years. They returned to a heap of scorched rubble.

“In some ways it seems like just a few weeks ago,” said Rita, 54, sitting in their small rented house on the other side of town.

The Hemsings are still sorting out what they lost in the fire; just the other week, Rita remembered the big hand-painted bowl that was atop the hutch.

And they’re still replacing everyday items, from muffin tins to garden clippers.

“People think what fun it must be to buy all new stuff,” she said. “It’s not fun.”

Unlike those of some fire victims, the Hemsings’ losses were fully covered by insurance. But they feel a lingering sadness at the loss of the irreplaceable: family memorabilia and heirlooms.

“Sometimes you still get kind of overwhelmed. You don’t sleep well for a while,” Rita said. “You still miss your house a lot.”

The “virtual reality” dreams, in which she glides through each room of the old house and looks at every item, have finally abated. It’s easier to concentrate--to read a book, for example--than it was in the months right after the fire.

Time has helped. So has keeping busy with school volunteer work. A few counseling sessions--and countless conversations with other fire victims in grocery store aisles and elsewhere--have reassured Rita that her family’s recovery process is normal.

“It does get better,” she said. “It’s just strange how you decide, well, OK, you can’t change it now. You’ve got to go on.”

A thick pile of newspaper clippings on the dining room table contains the record of the fire and its aftermath. They will go into a scrapbook for grandchildren to look at someday.

“It’ll be a big part of our family history,” she said.

There are six Hemsing children: Karen, 24, who lives in Denver; Erik, 22, who lives in Albuquerque; David, 19; James, 16; Renee, 12, and Thomas, 10.

Rita still can’t get used to the blackened mountains that form the city’s backdrop, and she can’t bring herself to walk the Quemazon Trail, a hiking path near their old house where the family spent many hours.

But Renee has been there with her sixth-grade class to plant ponderosa pine saplings.

“When we first went back there, there was nothing . . . just the burnt trees. Now it looks a lot better,” with plants and grass growing, she said.

The Hemsings will rebuild on the triangular lot at the forest’s edge where--over two decades--they gradually had turned a 900-square-foot fixer-upper into a house big enough for eight people.

“I truly miss having them as close neighbors--especially because James is my computer guru,” said next-door neighbor Inez Ross, a retired high school English teacher and a writer. “I really look forward to having them come back.”

Ross’ house was spared as the wildfire hopscotched through the neighborhood, taking houses next door, behind, and across the street.

“Some of those neighbors aren’t ever going to come back. . . . That’s very sad,” Rita said. But the family never seriously considered going elsewhere.

“That’s home,” she said. “Even though it’s going to be strange, it’s where we want to be.”

Another neighbor whose home was undamaged said a couple of families have already moved back in.

“It’s nice to have your neighbors back. . . . It’s almost depressing over here,” said Paula Schmitt, who lives around the corner. “Every which way I look from my house, it’s either burned or it’s dirt.”

The Hemsings’ new house will be much like the old one, but with two bathrooms (the old house had one), a bigger kitchen and a larger garage in which Billy, a mechanical engineer at Los Alamos National Laboratory, can work on the family’s fleet of old cars.

The plans include a small room to be used as a library--”so we can have a bunch of books and plants, a little quiet place,” Renee said--and a big open room on the second floor where the kids can gather or practice playing violin, guitar and cello.

And, like the old house, it will have an enclosed porch across the front for Rita’s plants. She lost 300 in the fire and is slowly rebuilding her collection.