After fire destroys family’s home, coronavirus prevents new one from being finished

• Jan Murphy/PennLive
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  I cover state government and basic and higher education policy. Reach me at JMurphy@pennlive.com or at 717-255-4106 or 717-255-4106.

Dan and Heather Adamson were at church leading worship when they received a call from a Franklin County 911 dispatcher that no homeowner wants to get.

Their Hamilton Township home was on fire. This family of five lost their home and all their belongings on the morning of Sept. 29. But adding to the devastation is their inability to finish construction on a home to replace it.

That work was brought to a standstill by Gov. Tom Wolf’s order to shut down businesses that are not life-sustaining. The order is part of his mitigation efforts to slow the spread of COVID-19.

The Adamsons’ builder, J&B Custom Built Homes of Greencastle, applied for a waiver to that closure order specifically for this project that was on schedule to be completed by June 15. In it, he pledged to have only one or two workers inside the home at the same time to adhere to health experts’ social distancing recommendations. He told PennLive each worker would have used his own tools.

On Friday, Justin Grove, J&B’s president, received a response. It was a denial.

Waiver request denial by PennLive on Scribd

The Adamsons know others are affected worse than they are by this pandemic. They feel blessed to have their children, their lives and the roof of their temporary housing over their heads. But Dan Adamson said he never thought a consequence of the virus would be a delay in their plans to return to a home at their old address.

“We were expecting schools, work, and large gatherings and church things [to be affected],” he said. “But I wasn’t looking at our home and the residential construction industry as being ultimately affected by it.”

Wolf’s decision to order construction activity to break off has been a point of contention for Republican lawmakers.

GOP leaders in the House and Senate have urged the governor to relent on at least this part of his mitigation response. Legislation has been offered in both chambers to do so.

A bill that would replace the Wolf Administration’s list of life-sustaining businesses with less-restrictive guidance from the federal Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency is teed up for a vote in the House. A proposed bill allowing construction activity to resume is in the works in the Senate.

Democratic members say the priority right now needs to be on saving lives and call the Republican-backed measures premature.

So does the governor.

“If we begin to slip in our efforts to distance ourselves socially, we could very easily see explosive growth rates,” Wolf said in a recorded message prior to Friday’s COVID-19 update. “There are cases where just one person has infected dozens of others so don’t be patient zero.”

The House is expected to return on Tuesday for a voting session. It’s unclear at this time when the Senate will return.

Haunting memories

For Dan Adamson, seeing his house fully engulfed in flames brought back haunting memories from his boyhood.

Almost 25 years ago to the day, he saw a similar scene when he was 9 at his family’s home in Waynesburg, Greene County.

“I remember when I was a kid, we had a fire and we didn’t know it was happening,” said the engineer employed by JLG in Chambersburg. “When we got home, I remember sitting there vividly. Watching it. Watching the firemen knock windows out, cut holes in the roof. It’s not a fun thing to watch happen.”

When he and his wife got the life-changing call last September near the end of the late worship service at King Street Church, they abruptly abandoned their worship leader duties: She sang. He played the drums. They gathered up their children from their church classrooms and headed for home.

Not wanting their children to see what Adamson witnessed as a kid, they dropped them off at a family friend’s house who lived nearby. That friend, who had just left the church, called 911 to report the fire and provided the dispatcher with Heather Adamson’s phone number.

The dispatcher asked Heather if anybody was in the house. She said there wasn’t but their dog was in the basement. The fire company arrived within 15 minutes. They were able to rescue the dog. But the fire, determined to be caused by an electrical issue, destroyed their home right down to the foundation.

Gone were all their clothing, the kids’ toys, their furniture, and all of their belongings. Especially difficult for Heather was the loss of the newborn outfits her children wore when she brought them home from the hospital. Unlike other things they lost, those are irreplaceable. So is her engagement and wedding rings, which as was her practice, she removed the night before.

“We were running late to get to the church and had a couple of things we had to do in the morning before we had to lead worship,” she said. “I forgot to put them on that morning and they were lost in the fire.”

As her husband wrote in a letter to the governor, “the pain and tears that I watched my parents have as everything that they had worked so hard for was gone was now the same pain and tears that my wife and I were shedding.”

The family had lived in that house since 2012. And in the 15 minutes’ time it took for the fire company to arrive after receiving the call, it was torched.

“There wasn’t much they could do when they got there,” Dan Adamson said. “Honestly, they defensively took action to try to keep other houses [from going up in flames]. The other houses did incur some damage. Really just cosmetic siding stuff on both sides. But yeah, ours obviously was a total loss.”

Rebuilding process

The Adamsons signed a six-month lease on a townhouse in Chambersburg to live in temporarily. Now they are working on pushing that out until their house gets finished – whenever that is.

It was supposed to be ready for them to move in by mid-June. The demolition work to knock down the charred remains of their house and clear the site was completed in November. Construction on the house began Jan. 5.

The house was framed and roof installed and shingled. Much of the exterior work was finished. They were scheduled to have their electrical inspection done the week of March 23. The insulation and drywall work could start soon after that.

But the March 20 shutdown order from the governor quashed that plan.

“We were making some good progress,” said Grove, the builder. “Had nice weather there through the winter and we were staying on schedule. So this is pretty devastating for that family, for sure. Adding pain to their already painful situation.”

Dan Adamson said it’s definitely disappointing.

“We were really starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel here that we were going to get back into our house. We were really starting to shop for furniture and shop for those last finishing touches,” he said. “To see progress stop for what it’s been three weeks now is disappointing and heartbreaking.”

He rested hope on Grove being able to secure a waiver from the governor’s business closure order. After all, emergency repairs are one of the permissible activities that were included on the list of life-sustaining businesses.

In Adamson’s mind, the work being done on his home was an emergency repair.

“The only reason we’re building this house is because we lost our home,” he said. “We had no plans to go build a house. Obviously, we are just rebuilding on the site we were at. We just want back what we had and go back to our home.”

That’s when he reached out for the first time in his life to his local senator for his assistance. His builder reached out to another senator as well. Adamson sent his letter to the governor asking him to re-evaluate the administration’s definition of emergency repair.

“I would fully believe most people would consider something that is out of your control whether it’s a natural disaster, a tornado, a flood, a fire in our case, that we should be able to continue building and repair our home,” Adamson said.

Mounting frustrations

The Adamsons aren’t alone in feeling frustrated.

Senate Majority Leader Jake Corman, R-Centre County, said the governor’s list of essential businesses and waiver process has proven to be “the most frustrating thing I’ve dealt with in my time in the Legislature from a constituent service point of view.”

He said he and others have tried to work with the governor to understand the inconsistencies in the administration’s thinking as to which businesses can operate and which ones can’t. They have not been successful.

“He’s clearly falling on the side where his health care experts are telling him to be,” Corman said.

Republican senators hope to work with the governor to come up with a better process of deciding which businesses can open. If that’s not successful, Corman said they’ll perhaps consider going the legislative route.

One idea might be turning over the decision about opening up the economy to local leaders once the number of the coronavirus cases start to decelerate, he said. The pandemic is impacting areas of Pennsylvania differently. There are a lot of cases in the southeast and northeast but parts of the central and western regions of the state have been barely touched by the pandemic.

“So maybe returning these decision to the local level would be better than sort of a one-size-fits-all,” Corman said. “If the purpose is to make sure we are being socially distant and following CDC guidelines, who would better know if a business is doing that than the local community as opposed to a bureaucrat in Harrisburg who is looking at paperwork.”

House Democrats, meanwhile, stand with Wolf in his decision-making about construction activity. Caucus spokesman Bill Patton noted the governor has allowed some limited work to continue. That includes site stabilization and securing partially built homes from weather damage as well as some critical highway projects.

Wolf has taken his lead from Pennsylvania Health Secretary Dr. Rachel Levine and Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.

“The daily COVID-19 updates indicate the steps Pennsylvanians have taken may be starting to bend the curve just a little but it’s far too soon to change the approach,” Patton said. “House Democrats agree with the governor and medical experts like Dr. Fauci and Dr. Levine. Saving lives is our priority.”

But like the Adamsons, House Republicans want to see a little more movement to allow other certain projects to continue, especially in light of the federal government recognizing construction as an essential business.

“We advanced legislation through the appropriations committee to seek clarification for all business owners who sought waivers and allow businesses who meet CDC and CISA list qualifications to resume working if they choose,” said House GOP spokesman Mike Straub.

Additionally, he said House Republicans are examining other proposals to loosen up the reins on construction activity while monitoring the impact of the pandemic on public health and the state’s economy.

“The governor acknowledges some businesses can operate safely. He created the waiver system,” Straub said. “We just ask that some uniformity be brought to that process, and following the federal CISA list would allow that.”

Wolf acknowledged in a Friday afternoon conference call with reporters that his administration’s team tried to apply common sense in deciding which businesses could operate during the crisis.

“If there’s something where we’ve made a mistake or erred, I’m all ears,” Wolf said.

The goal of the hard stop to non-life-sustaining businesses, he said, is to get through the pandemic’s surge so the state can move into the next phase sooner.

“I think every time we talk about opening something up, we’re just going to be prolonging this phase,” Wolf said. “So if we’re going to err, we ought to err on the side of keeping our feet on the brakes.”

Grove, the Adamsons’ builder, said he understands the health risk that COVID-19 poses.

“From the guys and my subcontractors I talk to, everyone has a healthy fear of this virus,” he said. “No one wants to bring this home to their families but we also have to provide for our families. We are not a nanny state. I think we’re all adults here and understand the situation. From the guys I talk to and even myself, we respect it enough and don’t want to see this brought into our homes but we can work in a way that is safe. That’s just my opinion.”

Dan Adamson said he hesitated to share his family’s plight. He does not want to come across as whining about the situation his family is in, knowing others may be suffering more. But it’s the frustration over a lack of clarity in the business closure order that makes it difficult for he and his wife to accept and why he spoke up.

“I want more people to see the decisions the [policymakers] are making are affecting people’s lives deeply,” he said. “Ones worse than ours.”

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