Plummer family loses home in fire

PLUMMER — A charging battery was blamed for costing Kandice Sijohn-Baldwin and her four children their home.

Sijohn-Baldwin was working May 31 when she got the call that her home was on fire. 

"We lost everything," she said. “A lot of sentimental possessions were lost, but that's all replaceable, but I’m trying to figure out where everybody’s head will lay tonight. We actually thought my 9-year-old was in the house.”    

Her oldest son had luckily picked up her daughters, so only their three animals were home when the blaze began.  

“We lost two animals,” Sijohn-Baldwin said. “We retrieved one but we think the other two were in the fire.” 

Her missing and deceased pets were an American Bully dog and a tabby cat that were much beloved by the family. 

Her main goal now is to get everyone back under one roof on her property. Cleanup after the fire and rebuilding are the two main things on her mind. 

Sijohn-Baldwin inherited the older trailer from her grandmother and had been told she couldn’t insure it because it was too old.

She and her family improved the trailer and property, putting in new toilets, re-pipped it, put in new windows and redid the floors. 

She is a Coeur d'Alene tribal member and she was amazed that a plaque that belonged to her grandmother when she worked for the tribe made it unscathed out of the fire.  

The second fire examiner had another discovery that turned some of the family’s sense of loss into hope. 

Photo albums that had belonged to her grandmother were still intact, somehow surviving the explosion. 

“He seemed so excited because he’s never seen something like that with the amount of an explosion there was in the fire, he couldn’t believe how well preserved the pictures were,” Sijohn-Baldwin said.  

The photos smelled of fire but were otherwise undamaged.  

“There was nothing but those pictures that was left, it was so emotional,” Sijohn-Baldwin said.  

A GoFundMe account has been started for the family.

Sijohn-Baldwin said what happened was a result of leaving a battery charging for too long. She wanted to share that information in the hopes that it could help someone else avoid a similar loss.

“Especially in older homes, unplug things before you leave,” she said.

    This photo of Roberta Juneau survived the fire that occurred when a charging weed eater battery exploded. Juneau was Kandice Sijohn-Baldwin's grandmother and a Coeur d'Alene Tribal council member.
  

    This was all that remained of Kandice Sijohn-Baldwin's home after a fire destroyed her home May 31.