After Texas Fire destroyed Idaho home, fundraiser seeks help for reconstruction

Marsha Schoeffler stands outside of her house destroyed by wildfire the day after she evacuated. (Courtesy of Marsha Schoeffler)

When Marsha Schoeffler first found out, she was standing at her sink pitting cherries.

One of her neighbors knocked on her door, telling her a fire had started about a mile away.

She lives four miles from Kendrick, a rural north central Idaho town home to around 300 people in Latah County.

She walked out of her house to see smoke rising. She quickly started packing her Jeep.

Early the next morning, she returned to find her house had burned down, she told the Idaho Capital Sun in a phone interview.

A few days later, she got a home insurance check. But the payout from the policy — which she set up when her house was built, a decade earlier — wouldn’t cover the costs of reconstruction.

That’s part of why she asked for help through a GoFundMe , set up by her friends, that has raised over $39,000 out of a $50,000 goal.

She encouraged people to make sure they revisit their home insurance policies with their agent, since construction costs and assessed home value have risen.

“It wasn’t as much as I could’ve had on it,” Schoeffler said.

The GoFundMe is part of the support she’s receiving from friends and community members.

A neighbor adopted her garden. Several neighbors have offered to let her stay with them. She’s living in Moscow for now.

“The amazing thing is, for me, the support I’m getting from my wide circle of friends,” she said.

‘In the bullseye’ of wildfire

Schoeffler said she had about an hour to pack for her escape. Among the items she took were some photos off the wall, clothes, fishing poles, a box accordion, three fiddles and fiddle music she’d collected.

She’d already stowed camping gear in a car storage topper from a recent camping trip.

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Then she drove off, stopping to check on a neighbor and again atop the Cedar Ridge grade, where she and neighbors watched smoke rise from the Texas Fire — a human-caused, 1,582 acre wildfire burning outside of Kendrick that fire officials say started July 15 and is 80% contained .

Schoeffler feels fortunate it wasn’t worse. For wildfires, she said the fire has been relatively small. And firefighters responded quickly, she said.

“I was in the bullseye of it, so I got hit pretty hard. But it could’ve been so much worse and affected so many more people. So I’m really thankful for that,” she said.

‘A little piece of heaven on Earth’

Since Schoeffler was a teenager, she’d dreamt about having a cabin on the property.

Ten years ago, she said she got it.

She was retiring from her career as a video producer to become a full-time groundskeeper on her property — tending to new trees she’d planted, clearing out brush or other work.

“I had just created a little piece of heaven on Earth there,” she said.

Part of pioneer families in the area, she grew up on the land her home was on that she inherited. Her house was built near a swimming hole she’d learned to swim in as a kid.

One of the fiddles she brought was her grandpa Kelley’s, which she learned to play on.

The fire also burned her sister’s and cousin’s properties. And it burned more than her house, she said.

“It burnt my forest,” Schoeffler said.

The forest will regenerate eventually, but likely not in her lifetime, she said.

“I always knew it would burn sometime. It’s not a matter of ‘Will it?’ It’s just a matter of when,” Schoeffler said. “It might’ve been in my lifetime or not. But I’ve never known of a fire like this on that property … since my great grandparents were there in the 1880s.”

Reconstruction plans

Schoeffler said she isn’t sure of full reconstruction costs or plans yet. But she’s already starting to contact builders and local regulators.

In September, she plans to clean up the property.

She said she won’t be starting from scratch. Her solar panels survived the fire for her off-the-grid house, complete with a well and septic drain field.

In August, she plans to visit Centralia, Washington, for the annual old-time music campout with many of her musician friends — one of whom offered to help with architecture.

Each May, her musician friends from across the West would visit her house and play old-time fiddle tunes at a campout she called “Marsha Fest.”

She doesn’t think there’ll be one next year.

“All of those people are just heartbroken for me. And maybe a little bit for themselves too. Because it ain’t the same place anymore,” she said.

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