Dream home destroyed in minutes
The Wright's dream house smoulders after being gutted by a fire the night of August 6. In a matter of minutes thousands of hours of hard work was gone.
Completely engulfed in flames, the wood interior of the Wright's home combined with the recent dry heat allowed the fire to spread quickly.
Seth and Jenna Wright and their six children stand in front of their dream house. The family hand-cut the stone from the house and Seth designed and custom-built the windows.
Editor’s Note: Because of their well-known presence on social media, at the request of the family the location of their home is being withheld for personal safety and privacy.
SANPETE COUNTY–Just before 10 p.m. Thursday, August 6 a dream years in the making burnt to the ground. Seth and Jenna Wright received a call telling them that their beautiful hand-crafted home was in flames.
Neighbors in the surrounding communities have watched over the past two years as the couple and their children built the house literally stone by stone, with boulders they split by hand on their property. The stonework had been completed just a few weeks before and work in earnest had begun on the inside.
“I haven’t stopped crying. It’s unreal,” said Jenna wright, a mother of six young children. She and her husband Seth purchased the property four years ago with the dream of building an English-style home. Jenna said that she didn’t want a home that looked like an old home. She wanted a new home that looked like it had been built “back then.”
With that in mind, Seth set to work.
“When you get to know Seth, you will learn that when he wants to do something he will figure out a way to do it,” Jenna said. Seth spent seven months splitting the stone with two other guys, and their two oldest sons.
“We had worked and saved for years, and sold both of our businesses to be able to move to the country and build our home. We put everything into it.”
“The day before this happened I just said to Seth I wanted to be in the house by Christmas. The house is here, the farm and animals are here, the kids’ friends are here.”
The night of the fire Seth had just returned to the home they are in temporarily until they complete their dream home. Not long after the Wrights received a phone call that would change their lives. “The Schlappis saw the fire first and called us,” Jenna said. By the time the Wrights made the drive to the building site the home was already gutted.
The Wright’s neighbor Tyler Schlappi said, “We were outside at 9:45 and there were no flames; nothing suspicious.” Around 9:50 p.m. he went outside and saw the whole house engulfed in flames and he called 911.
“The dumpster next to the house was on fire and there were a lot of embers and ash and me and all the kids just started stomping them out.” The Schlappis also gathered the Wright’s dogs, horses, and other animals and took them away from the fire where it was safe.
“They’re good friends of ours, Schlappi said. “Our kids were over there just a few hours before the fire started playing with their kids over at the house.
“We have enjoyed watching them create their dream home. It’s just heart breaking to just see all that hard work go up in flames in just a matter of minutes.”
The house was not the only thing the Wrights lost in the fire. Seth had just started a new business making windows – he hand-made the windows for the house out of steel and others wanted windows just like them. His tools for that new business were also in the house. There were also eight truckloads of white oak flooring.
With the Wrights doing the majority of the work on their home, insurance will cover a relatively small part of the family’s loss. It was a construction insurance policy so none of their sweat equity or things like Seth’s tools are covered.
“We can’t touch anything until the construction insurance investigative team comes,” Seth said.” The state investigator came and determined that the fire wasn’t caused by arson, but were unable to determine the cause. The state marshal said you’re not going to find anything in this. You could spend a lot of money and do a lot of fancy research but he says that when it’s at this point there are no smoke patterns or nothing.”
The Wrights have since learned that a professional contractor they had hired to help on the house likely made a tragic mistake that lead to the fire. “He feels terrible about it,” Jenna said. “But we hold no malice toward him. We know mistakes happen.”
“If we rebuild – when, it won’t be wood-framed. He originally wanted to build it with solid stone and maybe cinder block inside, but we didn’t have the time or the money,” said Jenna. “I don’t know how or when, but next time.”
When asked what next Seth said, “I don’t know. We’ve got to try and figure that out.” “”I don’t know if we have it in us to do it all again,” Jenna continued.
Jenna said their next move was to get a hold of the city and see if they can try to build just another really small house on the property; “Just something like a kitchen family room, and one bedroom and a loft upstairs for the kids to sleep in until we figure it out.”
“When I was a kid my parents moved to this area and we lived in this area for five years. I wanted to raise my kids down here,” Seth said.
Looking for the good, as he saw the charred timbers that were supposed to be exposed beams in the kitchen area of the house, Seth said, “I wonder if I can take all that char off. And then have like really weathered beams and we could build a table. Maybe we can just scrape off the top like a burnt piece of toast.”
Sharing in his optimism Jenna said, “I can’t bear the thought of tearing this down.” The extreme heat of the fire completely compromised the house’s foundation.” If we can I want to stabilize the foundation and stabilize the walls. They won’t okay it enough to inhabit it, but if we could do a courtyard garden in it and maybe build our house next to it, maybe someday.”
Walking around the house there are puddles of glass that dripped from Seth’s hand-made windows. Some of the glass is still clinging to the frames in globs. “I want to find a really cool piece of it and make some artwork out of it,” he said.
“This is part of our story now. It makes you very keenly aware of all that matters. We’ve seen so many miracles. With all the loss and heartache there have been so many people, it’s an amazing community… It’s hard to see in the world all the good. With this it was instant to see that there is always more good than bad and sometimes it take tragedy to see that.”
Turning to her belief in God, Jenna said, “I can say look at all we have put in to this and now it’s gone or I can say he saved us before we moved in. We thought we were building a house, but through the whole thing he has been refining us and building us.”
“If this had happened after we were living here we could have lost family. To me that’s the biggest miracle… We can be sad about it forever but it’s not going to change.”
Jenna said, “I woke up the next morning feeling like it was a bad nightmare.” They had put their youngest baby in bed with them because they were so tired from staying up watching the fire burn. When she woke up he was just smiling at her and staring at her. “It was like this heavy ache but when I saw him it was like, mom, we’re all here.”
Family has set up a GoFundMe to help the Wrights at https://gf.me/u/ynjpik. Contributions can also be made via Venmo: Jenna-Wright-6. Check out the Wright’s Instagram account @whiteshantyathome.
