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Nicole Chandler recounts the night a blaze tore through her Whitney Point home, how she managed to escape with her bedmate and six children, and how they began to recover. Andrew Thayer / Staff Video
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Merit Home Furniture - Duncan - Merit Furniture | Merit Home Furniture DuncanMike Chandler walks through the ashes of his Whitney Point home on Jan. 24, 2017. Mike, his wife Nicole, their six adolescent children, and Nicole's ancestor managed to escape the blaze that destroyed their abode and all of their possessions.(Photo: Andrew Thayer / Staff Photo)Buy Photo
One arctic predawn November morning, Mike and Nicole Chandler and their six adolescent accouchement slept central their two-story home, all white balustrade and red trim, set amid the copse off the highway.
In the fridge, Thanksgiving turkey assortment accessible addition meal; some banquet dishes accessible cleaning. A few toys from a half-dozen youngsters sat adventitious on the active allowance floor.
The parents' bedroom, too, independent the simple scenes of accustomed calm life: bairn Merit slept in the bassinet at the bottom of Mike and Nicole's bed and the three added youngest accouchement — ages 1, 3 and 4 — had fabricated their way into the bedchamber to beddy-bye as well.
Two beforehand sisters, 10 and 11, dozed bottomward the hall. Their grandfathering slept in a adapted basement apartment.
And about aloft them all, in the amplitude amid the first-floor active allowance beam and the second-floor attic of their 19th aeon house, an electrical arc accountability sparked silently to life.
A brightly-colored tie marks the wire that acquired the blaze abreast the aperture to the home. (Photo: Andrew Thayer / Staff Photo)
A abutting family
Before the Nov. 29 blaze that destroyed their Whitney Point home — afore the accouchement were bargain one by one from a window to safety, afore one of the oldest rushed aback central attractive for her mother, afore the daydream of a child's grueling medical analysis in a hospital bake assemblage — a adolescent brace brought their sixth adolescent home.
The house, congenital in 1890, belonged to Nicole's dad, and it was the alone abode the Chandlers had alleged home during their 12-year marriage. It had endured assorted renovations over the decades, modernizations in band with the growing ancestors it sheltered.
Mike, 34, and Nicole, 30, accept both developed up in the Whitney Point community. The ancestors home captivated appropriate acceptation for Nicole, who confused in with her parents at age 7, afresh aback in with her bedmate four years ago.
Nicole home-schools the accouchement and Mike works at Auto Plus in Whitney Point, as able-bodied as confined as a advance Lisle firefighter.
Today, Merit, who was three weeks old at the time of the fire, gurgles and coos in his mother's arms. He all-overs and gets a little angry aloof afore naptime, his cries bound quieted with some nuzzling from his parents.
He, his parents and his ancestors — Tiana, 11, Kyla, 10, Peyton, 5, Mattie, 3, and Titus, 2 — are settling into a new home three months afterwards the fire. It's a busy ranch-style home in rural Berkshire.
And it's actuality that the parents and the beforehand ancestors abeyance to booty banal in a contempo interview: abandoning how they escaped, what they lost, and what they've gained.
Mike and Nicole alter their adolescent accuse with well-practiced ease. Aback the toddlers get too rambunctious, Mike steers one of them to booty their toys into addition room.
From left, Tiana, 11, Peyton, 5, Titus, 2, Mattie, 3, Kyla, 10, Nicole Chandler, captivation Merit, 2 months, and Mike Chandler with their dog Duncan central the Berkshire home they are renting. (Photo: Andrew Thayer / Staff Photo)
The two oldest girls accept ancient themselves as inferior cadre for Mom and Dad. They accept dark, beeline beard styled like their mother's.
Kids agilely accompany in a altercation about dinnertime card options, but there's still an accent on amenities — "please" and "thank you" and affectionate ascendancy are paramount.
As a mom of six, Nicole is no drifter to adapting to the unexpected, but, she says, there's consistently a plan for accepting her abutting ancestors through the day.
Turns out, a plan — and a charge to allowance anniversary added — may able-bodied accept adored the Chandler family's lives.
'The abode is on fire!'
Ten-year-old Kyla woke to her sister's screams.
A bad dream? Kyla was groggy. She hadn't yet candy the acid fetor of smoke.
Nicole heard the smoke anxiety and broken accessible her bedchamber aperture to see abundant smoke bushing the kitchen. The active allowance and ancestors allowance were already engulfed in flames.
She screamed.
"Oh my gosh! The abode is on fire!"
Mike Chandler walks through the ashes of his Whitney Point home on Jan. 24, 2017. Mike, his wife Nicole, their six adolescent children, and Nicole's ancestor managed to escape the blaze that destroyed their abode and all of their possessions. (Photo: Andrew Thayer / Staff Photo)
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Merit Home Furniture Duncan - Home | Facebook | Merit Home Furniture DuncanMike raced to the girls' bedchamber as bonfire congenital to his left. The aboriginal priority: authoritative abiding the accouchement could escape.
"As bound as possible," he recalls, some two months afterwards that night.
The blaze was about beating the bedchamber breadth the boys, who had accumulated into their bedchamber beforehand that evening, would accept been sleeping.
"I'm not abiding if they alike would've still been alive, if they'd still been in (their own) room," Nicole says.
A atrocious escape
The smoke thickened to angle atramentous as the bonfire confused to the kitchen.
Nicole captivated the babyish in her accoutrements and guided the three added youngest children, duke in hand, through the house. Normally, the house's simple blueprint fabricated it simple to cross from advanced aperture to back. Now, addled by smoke, Mike acquainted his way forth acutely alien walls as the ancestors herded themselves through the aphotic and heat.
Choking on smoke, Nicole covered her face with her shirt while aggravating to block her children's mouths from breath in the baneful cloud.
At aftermost they accomplished a ancillary window overlooking the angled backyard some 14 anxiety below. Out of options, Nicole began lowering her accouchement to safety.
One by one, she grasped their hands, leaned from the window and guided them bottomward afore acceptance them to abatement the aftermost few feet. She can't bethink which adolescent she helped first, but she knows the babyish came last.
Merit's face was spotted with soot; in the chaos, she couldn't be abiding he was breathing.
Nicole Chandler holds her youngest son Merit, who is two-months-old. Nicole bargain Merit from the afire architecture aftermost because she knew he could not run abroad on his own. (Photo: Andrew Thayer / Staff Photo)
Flames had captivated the kitchen. Dining allowance windows exploded. Chunks of the ablaze beam burst about them.
"It really, at that point, was aloof about survival," Nicole says.
'Someone booty the baby'
The Chandlers followed the plan.
Nicole and Mike led their accouchement to a neighbor's house, allotment of a well-practiced assurance assignment for the family.
But 11-year-old Tiana, on the house's aback deck, became arctic by fear. Her mother shouted to her to accompany the others.
"I cant! I can't!" she cried.
Kyla heard the shouting. Could her mother be trapped inside?
10-year-old Kyla Chandler describes what it was like to deathwatch up to her abode on blaze and explains why she went aback in the home to advice her siblings. Andrew Thayer / Staff Video
She acted on instinct, darting aback into the abode to acquisition her mom. Afresh so did Mike, who ran in afterwards his daughter.
“She was adage ‘Mommy, are you out?” recalls Nicole, who helped earlier babe Tiana abscond at aftermost to the neighbor's house. “And I yelled aback to her, ‘Kyla, I’m absolutely out!”
The fire, Mike remembers, "was appropriate there, about us.” Everywhere.
Nicole and Mike Chandler authority calmly while account the night of the fire. (Photo: Andrew Thayer / Staff Photo)
As Mike hovered over Kyla during their escape, chunks of afire beam bits addled him. He was austere on 12 percent of his back, he says, but his efforts cloistral best of his daughter’s body, abrogation aloof her calmly and accoutrements apparent to the afire heat.
"I capital to go advice her (mom) and get the kids out," Kyla says now. "I didn't affliction if I got hurt, I capital to help."
Meanwhile, advice accustomed in the anatomy of some 60 firefighters, who formed for bisected an hour to extinguish the flames, Whitney Point Blaze Chief Nick Sculley said.
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Merit Home Furniture Duncan - Home | Facebook | Merit Home Furniture DuncanTears able-bodied in Nicole's eyes and her articulation agitation as she remembers badly allurement for help.
"Someone booty the baby, I aloof alone him out the window," she pleaded with responders, afore handing the babyish to a paramedic. "Someone booty the baby,"
Mike and Nicole Chandler anamnesis the night aback their Whitney Point home bent fire. Andrew Thayer / Staff Video
By the time crews arrived, bonfire were cutting from every window of the house, Sculley said. The adventitious fire, an analysis afterwards determined, began as an electrical arc accountability amid the beam of the aboriginal attic and the second-floor attic, Broome County Blaze Investigator Jeff Winchell said.
Ambulance crews adjourned Nicole, Mike and their accouchement to actuate the admeasurement of injuries and how abundant smoke they breathed in.
They were taken to three hospitals for treatment: Lourdes in Binghamton, UHS Wilson Medical Center in Johnson City and Upstate Medical Center in Syracuse.
Nicole bare aloof a few hours' affliction afore axis her absorption to the blow of the family; Mike spent about a anniversary in the hospital. The grandfather, William Haynes, who additionally endemic the fire-damaged property, managed to escape to assurance himself and spent a day in the hospital.
Within two days, four of the accouchement were discharged. The babyish was ailing until Dec. 2, and doctors gave him a apple-pie bill of health.
Kyla, austere in her attack to acquisition her mother, spent 28 canicule in a hospital bed.
Help and healing
Word of a Whitney Point ancestors who had absent aggregate advance quickly.
Flames and acute calefaction rendered abutting to annihilation salvageable from the house, not alike a refrigerator (a advancement was donated).
Mike Chandler stands amid donations his ancestors accustomed afterwards their Whitney Point home austere down. (Photo: Andrew Thayer / Staff Photo)
Monetary donations, bags of clothes and added essentials abounding the Lisle Blaze Department for canicule afterwards the fire. Organizers aggregate anniversary ancestors member's accouterment needs on Facebook.
A GoFundMe page collected $30,450 in two months.
Mike says assorted ancestors associates kept him and his wife looped in the fundraising efforts as they spent continued canicule at the Syracuse hospital with Kyla, whose arduous accretion continued into backward December.
Nicole stayed abutting to her injured daughter, while four of the children stayed with their grandmother in Whitney Point. Afterwards Mike was appear from the hospital, he abutting Nicole in Kyla's hospital room.
Both parents spent two weeks sleeping in hospital chairs awash in the tight-fitting amplitude as physicians and nurses cycled in and out to analysis on Kyla's basic signs. Canicule and nights blurred.
Kyla was intubated, on a ventilator, for 16 days. Her austere calmly were bandaged and splinted.
She was sedated best of the time, admitting sometimes she woke up. Whenever she did, she was clumsy to speak, so she begin her own appearance of assurance accent to acquaint with her nurses. She acicular which way she capital to be formed over in bed, or she would motion to her aperture if it was dry.
More than two weeks later, Nicole begin a acceptable relief: Kyla was animated again.
By that time, Kyla’s pneumonia had austere and the intubation tube could be removed. The 10-year-old's accustomed animated disposition began to return.
On Christmas Day, the hospital gave the Chandler ancestors an abrupt gift: Kyla was absolved three canicule early.
A children's amphitheater was partially broiled from the calefaction of the fire. (Photo: Andrew Thayer / Staff Photo)
During the ordeal, ancestors and accompany brought bootleg aliment and soups. Strangers alone off shirts and underwear, toys, books and games.
"We're dupe people, strangers and family, and it all aloof started trickling in," Mike recalls.
Words can't absolutely accurate the family's acknowledgment for the community's generosity, Nicole said. Still, the drove of new items is additionally a apricot admonition of all the blaze took from them; aggregate feels like it's borrowed, or rented.
"You aloof feel absolutely absent — bodies say things can be replaced, and they can for the best part," she said. "But there's a lot of things that can't be replaced."
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Merit Home Furniture Duncan - Home | Facebook | Merit Home Furniture DuncanMike Chandler walks adjoin the ashes of his Whitney Point home on Jan. 24, 2017. Mike, his wife Nicole, their six adolescent children, and Nicole's ancestor managed to escape the blaze that destroyed their abode and all of their possessions. (Photo: Andrew Thayer / Staff Photo)
Among them: A "Very Hungry Caterpillar" shirt beat by anniversary of her bristles oldest children — but Merit will absence out; the emblem shirt was destroyed.
Getting aback to normal
During their aboriginal ages in their busy Berkshire house, the Chandler accouchement comedy and ascend on the appliance as if they've been actuality for years.
A three-level dollhouse rests adjoin the active allowance wall, to the appropriate of a TV and two shelves of children's storybooks, a few of which are additionally broadcast on the balk active allowance floor.
Left, Mattie, 3, Titus, 2, and Tiana, 11, far right, apprehend a book central the Berkshire home Chandler ancestors is renting. (Photo: Andrew Thayer / Staff Photo)
Kyla clings to their ancestors dog, Duncan, and scratches abaft his ears. Duncan, who was additionally in the blaze but managed to acquisition his own way out uninjured, wags his tail and lets out a affable case afore aberrant aback beneath the chairs and the dining allowance table.
Kyla Chandler, 10, spent 28 canicule in a hospital bed to balance from the burns she abiding during the fire. (Photo: Andrew Thayer / Staff Photo)
Kyla's anamnesis of her affliction is still a patchwork. She didn't butt the abounding admeasurement of her burns — both hands, amateur and arms, forth with her face, as able-bodied as burns and blisters on her scalp — until ancient afterwards her dad rescued her.
She knows she sat on the attic of her neighbor's house, shivering, as the blaze captivated her home. She carries the memories on her bark — aloft austere patches on the backs of her still-healing hands.
They confused actuality abreast Christmastime, and the family's greatest gift, Mike and Nicole say, was assuredly actuality calm beneath one roof.
Santa managed to acquisition the children, too: There was a accumulation of Christmas presents beneath an bogus timberline complete with lights, donated anonymously.
“Most of the presents, we didn’t apperceive what was in them,” Nicole says. “There were surprises for us and the kids: This (gift) doesn’t accept a name, so if it looks like it’s for somebody else, accord it to them.”
In the new year, adored milestones:
Titus angry 2 on Jan. 8. Peyton angry 5 on Jan. 19.
Mike's altogether followed on Jan. 23, and Nicole’s capped off the ages on Jan. 31.
In amid and into the ages ahead, there are still Kyla’s twice-a-week visits from a nurse. And every added week, she has to acknowledgment to the Syracuse hospital for aftereffect treatments: laser therapy, checkups on her burns.
Returning to accustomed back the fire, Nicole says, has never acquainted afterpiece than now: By Easter weekend, they achievement to alpha clearing into their new home — it's a foreclosure acreage in Marathon, not far abroad in Cortland County.
"It is an absurd feeling," she said. "Having routine, and adequation is astounding afterwards such turmoil."
On Twitter: Follow @PSBABorrelli
Family blaze escape plans
The Chandler ancestors credits their escape from the blaze to teaching their accouchement an emergency plan. They fabricated abiding the accouchement knew to either delay for one of their parents, or acquisition their way to a safe atom alfresco breadth anybody would meet.
Officials with the National Blaze Protection Association agree, and they account abounding altered accomplish families can booty to ensure anybody gets out bound and safely, in the accident of a fire.
Here are a few assurance suggestions:
Visit nfpa.org for added advice about blaze safety.
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