Fireworks touched off nightmare

A year ago today, Loree, Jon, Noelle and Ben Pick stood at the base of Mount Rushmore, watching fireworks glow against the majestic backdrop of the four presidents.

The display was so grand, the scene so spectacular, that Loree Pick didn't hear her cell phone going off repeatedly.

She soon would get the frantic message from Omaha: Their house was on fire.

While the Picks were enjoying the most professional, patriotic display they could imagine, some neighbors in west Omaha's Hillsborough subdivision were putting on their own show.

At some point, fireworks landed on the Picks' roof, setting the attic and upper floor of the four-bedroom, three-car-garage house on fire.

Within hours, the Picks were scrambling to get home — to what was left of their home.

On July 4, they arrived to find $263,000 in damage to the house and its contents.

A year later, the fallout continues. No one has acknowledged shooting off the fireworks that started the fire. Police responded and ticketed a next-door neighbor on suspicion of violating the city's ban on fireworks. A month ago, an insurance company filed a lawsuit against that neighbor for the full $263,000 in damage.

The Picks, meanwhile, are trying to move on.

After a year filled with rebuilding and insurance agents and contractors and kids' questions and more headaches than she can count, Loree Pick simply hopes people learn.

“It's been a nightmare,” she said. “I just want people to think twice before they shoot off their own fireworks. Yeah, it seems beautiful and it seems fun — until something goes wrong.”

Fire prevention officials say something goes wrong more times than people realize.

In 2006, the last year for which national numbers were available, 900 homeowners went through what the Picks did, suffering a house fire sparked by fireworks.

In Nebraska, fireworks caused at least 152 fires in 2007 and 2008 combined — 20 of those building fires.

Officials say Nebraska's numbers probably are low because they rely on voluntary reporting by fire departments.

Fires like the one the Picks suffered “are why a lot of these (fireworks) are outlawed,” said Capt. Jim Gentile, an Omaha Fire Department spokesman. “They're just so unpredictable and uncontrollable. When you light that fuse, you don't know what's going to happen, where it's going to go, what kind of damage it's going to do.”

The Picks know all too well what kind of damage it can do.

Loree Pick said she could barely sleep that night, wondering just how much damage was done to the house they had built in 1999 for $223,000.

Throughout the nine-hour drive home the next day, relatives phoned Pick to update her on the house, to brace her for the worst.

Loree Pick said it was worse than she had imagined.

The family arrived at their home near 142nd Street and Larimore Avenue to find the roof charred and the front door boarded up.

Clothes were thrown out windows, apparently in firefighters' scramble to put out the flames. Belongings were strewn on their driveway and front porch.

“It was very much like a tornado had hit our house,” she said.

The fire gutted and charred the entire second floor, including all of the bedrooms.

Water sopped the main floor and basement. Family photos and valuables were destroyed. And the stench was unbearable.

“It smelled awful — like our house was one big bonfire,” Pick said. “Just a disaster.”

In came the disaster team — insurance adjusters and contractors and inspectors.

The Picks had to pack up their belongings, one by one, and move into a relative's house for five months.

The roof had to be removed and rebuilt. The second floor had to be stripped to the studs and rebuilt.

Even the lower floors had to be cleared of carpet and furnishings, cleaned, inspected and tested.

The house that had been a joy to build was now anything but.

“It was just a long, long process,” Pick said.

The Picks weren't able to return to their house until two days before Christmas.

Six months later, Pick says, her family still goes through the sometimes comical process of trying to find things. At times, they will locate a missing item in a box. Other times, they simply give up, figuring it must have burned.

There are other things to sort out.

Pick says her children — Noelle is 11, Ben 7 — still ask questions. What went wrong? Why did this have to happen?

“They're a little bit scared about this Fourth,” Pick said. “I'm worried about how they're going to react if people start shooting off fireworks around us.”

Others are trying to sort out who shot off the fireworks in question. American Family Insurance has filed a lawsuit against Gerald Jacobi, the Picks' next-door neighbor, saying his fireworks landed on the Picks' roof. Omaha police ticketed Jacobi, 36, on suspicion of possessing illegal fireworks after another neighbor told police that he saw Jacobi lighting aerial fireworks in the street outside his home and the Picks' house.

Jacobi pleaded no contest to a misdemeanor fireworks charge and was fined $25.

Jacobi's attorney, Andrew Wilson, said his client acknowledges he was shooting off fireworks, such as parachutes and Roman candles, that he bought from a stand just outside Omaha.

However, Wilson said, Jacobi doesn't believe any of his fireworks went near the Picks' house. Wilson said several people, including the neighbor who talked to police, were shooting off fireworks that night. Wilson said his client and a neighbor called 911 and attempted to put out the fire as firefighters were on their way.

“I don't know how you would ever determine whose fireworks caused this,” Wilson said. “There were people shooting them off all over.”

That's precisely why Pick is asking everyone to rethink their homemade displays. She recently wrote an article for the Hillsborough Homeowners Association newsletter, urging her neighbors to leave the shows to the pros.

She understands that it would be a “huge task” for Omaha police to crack down on all fireworks violators. But Pick wonders if more enforcement would lead to fewer displays — and less danger.

Officer Jacob Bettin, an Omaha police spokesman, said police respond to every fireworks complaint lodged with 911. Such calls typically are lower priority than other emergencies, he said, unless the caller indicates that people are in danger.

“We're fortunate. We only lost some things in a fire,” Pick said. “We didn't lose our lives.

“But I don't want anyone else to have to go through what we've been through. It's been a horrible year.”

Contact the writer: 444-1275, todd.cooper@owh.com

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