Couple and six kids anxious to ‘go home and put this behind us’
By Vicky Wedig
Editor
A Delavan family displaced by a house fire Oct. 17 remained at a local hotel Monday and is anxious to get back home.
Amber (Square) Kroncke and Roy Durham and five of their six children escaped the fire, which started on the deck of their rental home at 412 E. Geneva St. The other child, a 12-year-old, was not home at the time of the fire. No one was injured.
Kroncke said Monday the family is still at the Super 8 in Delavan but hopes to be back in its home within the next couple of weeks.
The fire started at about midnight Oct. 17 on a deck in the back of the house after a friend leaving the house tossed a cigarette in a bucket on the deck unbeknown to them, Kroncke said.
Durham, who was awake in the living room, smelled smoke a few minutes later and saw flames on the deck when he went to investigate, Kroncke said via email. As he called 911, Durham carried two of the four girls who were sleeping upstairs out of the house and yelled for Kroncke and the couple’s baby, who were sleeping downstairs, to get out of the house, she said.
Kroncke said she wrapped their 6-month-old son in in a blanket and carried him out of the house with his face toward her chest to avoid smoke inhalation.
The children who were home ranged in age from 6 months to 11 years old.
The family received assistance from the Red Cross and the Salvation Army, but the available aid expired before the family was able to move back in to their home, Kroncke said. The Red Cross provided a prepaid card for a hotel room and necessities, and the Salvation Army paid for the family’s hotel stay from Oct. 21 to 25 after the Red Cross funds were gone. The family has been footing the bill since then.
“We’re all just homesick and want to go home,” she said via email.
After a difficult first week, Kroncke said the family is doing better and have already faced going back in to the home. She said she, Durham and the four older girls have been in the house, throwing away items that couldn’t be saved and salvaging what they could.
“Now we just want to go home and put this behind us,” she said.
Kroncke said the family is grateful to the Red Cross and the Salvation Army for their assistance, the Delavan police and fire departments for their quick response and the community for its support.
“The donations and prayers and everything is just amazing,” she said.
She said the emergency medical technicians who responded checked all the kids thoroughly, answered the kids’ questions about what was in their bags and kept them calm.
