The Times

Our Fire all vulnerable homeowners

BY VANCE PACKARD Author of "The Waste Makers," "The Status Seekers," "The Hidden Persuaders." Mr. Packard has produced three challenging books in as many years. While SUBURBIA TODAY does not necessarily agree with all his conclusions, we proudly present this article as another in our series by famous modern writers. Virginia and I learned a number of other lessons that may be of interest to all homeowners. —Make an inventory of all the possessions of value in your house, and bring the inventory up to date every year. For weeks Virginia kept thinking of things destroyed in our attic that she had not thought to report when the insurance adjustor first interviewed her. —Keep clutter out of the attic and the stairway to the attic. And where possible, use wood or metal storage boxes rather than pasteboard boxes. Just by luck all my working papers for my book, "The Hidden Persuaders," were stored in a large wooden box, and survived. On the other hand, other valued papers stored in pasteboard boxes were destroyed. —Don't build a roaring fire in your fireplace unless you are sure it is safe to do so. Have your chimney checked every year or two, if it is used much, and if possible install a stout wire screen in the top of the flue. —Remember that your insurance policy may have an 80% clause. This specifies that, to be fully covered, you must have your house insured for at least 80% of the cost of replacing it today. If your insurance is for less than 80% of the estimated replacement cost of the house, there will be some depreciation taken on the materials. —Make sure all people living in your house would have an exit—especially from bedrooms—in case of fire. It was only after the fire that Virginia and I realized that if our fire had occurred while we were sleeping and had broken through the attic door, Cindy would have been trapped and would have had to climb out her window where she could have had a very nasty fall onto concrete steps below. We've now shown her how to step to a nearby roof. —Keep a large, fully charged fire extinguisher in your home, and if feasible keep a garden hose long enough to reach to any part of your house, connected at all times to a faucet, preferably an inside one. —Finally, support and cherish your local fire department. We will always feel deeply indebted to the volunteers of the New Canaan and Silvermine fire departments who saved our home. After the fire, one fireman told me that as he approached the house in his car a man directing traffic shrugged and said, "It's gone." It certainly looked "gone" by the way it lit up the sky. Our local firemen, however, refused to believe it was "gone." And as a result of this conviction, we still have our home. Vance Packard, Christmas Eve, 1959. PHOTOGRAPH BY STEVE D'ARAZIEN HANS KNOPF Suburbia Today, January 1961 9