Family with major medical needs loses home to fire

PALMER — When Walter and Linda Hitesman awoke around 4:30 a.m., Feb. 10, Linda said she knew something wasn’t right.

“Just as I was getting up, I heard somebody holler,” she said, recalling the early morning.

That somebody turned out to be a neighbor trying to tell them their house was on fire.

The fire appeared to have started from a wiring problem inside one of the walls of their mobile home, she said, and had gone straight down to the skirting of the residence.

The couple’s 18-year-old daughter rushed outside with some water, but it wasn’t enough. The flames grew higher, and the fire department arrived too late.

“By the time they got there, it was a total loss,” Hitesman said, of her home.

Palmer Fire Department Deputy Fire Chief Bruce Axtell said he would agree with that statement, though they did douse the flames upon arrival.

“We fought it as we do any structure fire,” Axtell said.

Hitesman said the home was uninsured because it was built in 1973, and no insurer she contacted would cover a trailer built prior to 1986.

After the fire, the Red Cross put the family up in a hotel for three days, which was followed by a night at Family Promise Mat-Su’s facility. Last night, the Hitesmans’ daughter went to stay with a friend, while Walter and Linda slept in their Chevy Tahoe.

“(We) have no place to live right now,” Linda Hitesman said.

But the loss of their home is, unfortunately, one of the lesser concerns in the Hitesmans lives.

In 2001, when Walter was 34, he had his first heart attack. A decade later, he could no longer work, and the next year, doctors found a blood clot in the right atrium of his heart. He has been diagnosed with cardiomyopathy, among other heart health problems, and now is in need of a heart transplant. However, there are and have been various obstacles in the way of that operation.

Currently, Walter only has Medicaid coverage — not Medicare — which is a problem, Linda said, because the heart transplant team in Seattle “won’t take him” without the latter.

But he hasn’t been able to get Medicare because he didn’t start receiving disability benefits until last year, though he’s been out of work since 2011, Linda said. In the meantime, Linda has been making $640 per month to support the family of six — three humans and three dogs, one of which doctors say would make a good service dog for Walter.

“We cannot go anywhere without the dogs ’cause he’s got to have them,” Linda said. “They’re so good with my husband.”

Though the dogs escaped the fire unharmed, the family did lose a cat in the destruction.

Among the inanimate items lost in the fire was an oxygen machine loaned by Geneva Woods, which the Hitesmans were told they must pay for; all Walter’s medical records, some of which cannot be replaced, Linda said; a device linked with Walter’s pacemaker that sends information to the Alaska Heart Institute for monitoring; and their daughter’s computer, which had been loaned to her for home school classes.

As if replacing such things with no money and one family member in need of major medical assistance weren’t difficult enough, Linda has health concerns of her own.

She herself has had several strokes in the last 20 years, one of which took her unborn son when she was 21 years old.

“I almost died three times, and (the doctors) told me I couldn’t carry him, they said if tried to carry him I would die,” she said.

She was three months pregnant at the time. Two months later, she went into induced labor, one day before her daughter’s first birthday.

There would be no siblings.

“I buried him two days later,” Linda said.

The stroke she had then was the result of a blood clot in her brain, which resulted in a traumatic brain injury that has rendered the left side of her body much weaker than her right. One stroke was so severe she had to re-learn how to walk, and the combination of all of them has brought out diagnosed anxiety and post-medic stress disorder, as well as memory loss.

She’s developed a rather dark sense of humor about it, hoping she won’t remember all that she lost in the fire, but she gave another reason for what could be called her version of stoicism.

“If I sit and cry and think about everything I’ve lost, it’s not gonna do me any good,” she said.

Certain irreplaceable things may be harder to forget — the box of memorabilia from her failed pregnancy, including pieces of paper with ink prints of her baby boy’s hands and feet — but the family is trying to focus on moving forward.

The Hitesmans hope to move into Walter’s brother’s travel trailer in the next few days, which will keep them warm and dry, but will need some fixing up to be more appropriately livable, Linda said.

Monetary donations can be made to “Hitesman Fire Fund” at Wells Fargo Bank, though the family would appreciate cash donations of any amount, as well as building materials.

Linda Hitesman can be reached via email at lindaf168@yahoo.com.

Contact Caitlin Skvorc at 352-2266 or caitlin.skvorc@frontiersman.com.

Note: This story has been modified since it appeared in print Feb. 17.