Single senior loses home but promises to rebuild

Al Verschell, half owner of Tequila Dan's restaurant, was pretty sure his Timberline house had burned down before he saw the ruins.

"I saw my flag pole all bent over on the television news," he said. "I recognized the pole because I put the same ones up at the restaurant and at Dan's house."

When he finally drove up there with Dan Hague, his partner at the restaurant, all that was left of 4251 Timberline Drive was a brick wall.

"It's just one of those things," the 77-year-old said with a shrug. "There's nothing I can do about it, except proceed forward. And that's what I'm going to do."

Residents of the Timberline neighborhood were evacuated twice. The first was July 14, the day the Waterfall fire started. Verschell grabbed his cat, Samantha, whom he found years ago in front of Timbers Saloon, and some personal papers. The next day, residents were allowed back into the neighborhood.

"We thought everything had burned - there was no fuel left," Verschell said.

So life went back to normal. Construction workers continued driving nails on a nearby house, and Verschell worked on laying wooden flooring in the kitchen of his 3,500-square-foot home.

"I was just putting the finishing touches on it when a firefighter came up and said, 'The fire is going to burn over the hill in 30 minutes. You gotta get out of here,'" he said.

Before the sun set that afternoon, his two-story home had burned off the hillside. Flames leaped from a melted gas line, which roared like a jet. Roof tiles fell on the 1970 Porsche 911 in Verschell's garage. Its windows had turned to molten tear drops.

"I was saving that for my son who lives in Maryland," Verschell said. "But he doesn't have a garage so I didn't let him have it yet."

Scattered in the ashes now are corroded and bent swamp coolers, a black Dish Network satellite dish and a shattered metal fireplace.

On Sunday, Verschell met with the landlord of an Empire Ranch home he plans to rent. Before that, he was living in an RV in the Hagues' front yard. Verschell and the Hagues are partners at DJ RV in Mound House.

"The first two nights after the fire, I slept in their youngest son's room," Verschell recalled. "Then we got a trade-in trailer from DJ's and parked it in their front yard."

The support of the Hagues has meant a lot, said Verschell, calling them his Carson City family.

"It was good for me because I ate with them and I watched TV with them, and I didn't sit in a hotel and think," he said.

He plans to rebuild on the site, but not the same home design. He liked his large, peaked skylight, but will change the driveway.

"I always had 3 to 4 inches of ice right in front of my garage," he said.

Like everyone whose home burned, Verschell lost some things that are irreplaceable. He can never replace the steel machete he bought in 1942 to clear trails at scout camp in New York.

"It's not replaceable because it was a piece of memory as well as a piece of merchandise. Oh well, the blade is probably under the ruins down there somewhere."

Contact Karl Horeis at khoreis@nevadaappeal.com or 881-1219.