ELK, Wash. — A father of eight from Elk is trying to figure out next steps after losing his log cabin home to the Oregon Road Fire.
Michael Martin showed KREM 2 what was left of the cord wood log home he's been building by hand and out of pocket since 1999.
"This was the concrete that was left in between, each one of these holes was a log," Martin said. "We had our youngest son here, in this house, I delivered him in this house."
Martin moved onto those 10 acres with his late wife and eight kids. It's where he plans to retire and have grandkids over for the holidays.
"She passed away from cancer seven years ago and so she wasn't able to see it get this far and she wasn't able to see this, which is good," Martin said.
To make things worse, Martin's dream home and the shop he built with his kids had no insurance.
"There's been a lot of tears," Martin said. "It's heartbreaking."
"I was building the house myself out of pocket," Martin continued. "It's a cord wood log home and most insurance companies won't give you insurance for a log home, any type of log home, and so I've been battling with them for a long time and I finally found a small company back east that said they would insure it."
Martin says he was one month shy of having insurance.
There's been a lot of talk about state and federal resources coming in to help fire victims. But, at Tuesday night's meeting, which Martin attended, Spokane County Sheriff John Nowels told people not to count on a bailout.
"I don't want you to have this false idea that if you're not insured, you're going to be made completely whole by anybody here," Nowels said. It's just not going to happen, and I apologize for that. That is awful, but it's real."
"It's my responsibility," Martin said. "It's not somebody else's. So, I understood that, but it would be nice to at least get some type of sizable chunk so you can start moving forward. That's one of the reasons why we have the GoFundMe set up to try to offset a little bit."
Martin plans to rebuild and is already seeing signs of life poking through the ash.
"It will work out again," Martin said. "It just takes a lot of time, a lot of patience."
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