Family regroups after fire - Couple with 12 children lost everything
Jim and Amanda Pohl are trying to get their lives back on track after they and nine of their 12 children were burned out of their home in Stryker on New Year’s Eve.
The couple was in bed around 2 a.m. when Jim smelled smoke. Half-asleep, they thought it was just the wood stove at first.
“I knew we shouldn’t be smelling that in the middle of the night, so I went to look and the house was filling up with smoke,” Jim said.
Everyone made it out of the burning house OK, Amanda in nothing more than her underwear and the nine kids in their pajamas. The family went to a neighbor’s house and called 911.
Jim, 33, managed to rescue his guns. Amanda, 34, grabbed a family keepsake book she started last Valentine’s Day. Everything else was destroyed either by fire, smoke or water damage, Jim said.
Amanda, a photographer, lost all of her camera gear. That includes two cameras, a half-dozen camera lenses, a computer and photo-editing software.
Jim works as a home repairman and handyman. A customer let the family temporarily move into an unoccupied house that Jim was working on in Eureka until they can find another place to stay.
“I’m working on the house we’re living at now, which is good and bad,” Jim said Thursday. “I don’t have to go far to work, but I don’t feel right charging the folks for the work I’m doing. They’re paying the electric bill and not charging any rent.”
Friends who heard about the family’s disaster set up a donation page on Facebook and established a recovery fund at Glacier Bank in Eureka. They’ve been collecting items and helping haul them up to the family.
“Donations just started pouring in,” Jim said about the “humbling and overwhelming” support his family has been getting from people all over the Flathead and Tobacco valleys, even from people out of state.
That support has helped restore some semblance of normalcy.
“The kitchen is restocked, the bathroom is restocked,” Jim said. “It’s been pretty awesome. We’re just so grateful and thank God for all the blessings we’ve been receiving.”
Donations of clothes helped get four kids back in local schools. The other children are staying with family members from previous marriages.
Jim said the family is still looking for some living room furniture and trying to find some jeans for his wife. Only some jeans fit properly without irritating nerve damage in her abdomen from four C-sections.
“Other than that we just need to keep paying our bills, keep work coming in and get into a new place,” Jim said. They’re looking for someplace big enough to house them, their 12 kids and dogs and horses.
Jim, a former volunteer firefighter, said he never expected to be burned out of his house. He and his wife had a lease with an option to buy for the house in Stryker, which was uninsured. They’d been in the house since last March and had hoped to eventually open a campground or church retreat for children there.
“We’re moving forward assuming we can’t get it back. If we can, we’ll just be grateful because we do love it out there,” Jim said of the property in Stryker. “We’re pretty much leaving it up to God where we end up.”
The fire that destroyed the house started in the chimney or the house’s electrical system, Jim said, encouraging other people to be safe this winter.
“I grew up heating with wood and never worried about it. People need to make sure they’re keeping their chimneys clean and their wiring and smoke detectors in order,” Jim said. “Don’t take things for granted. My wife and I were very fortunate to be able to get all our kids out of there without anybody getting hurt. We were very fortunate, but that’s not always the case.”
More information about how to help the Pohl family can be found online at The Pohl Family Fire Fund on Facebook. People also can call family friend Diana Park at 407-6591.
Reporter Tom Lotshaw may be reached at 758-4483 or by email at tlotshaw@dailyinterlake.com.