Building back: Vestavia firefighter rebuilds after losing house to blaze

Life for Vestavia Hills Fire Department firefighter Jonathan Vickery is almost back to normal. Almost.

Seventeen months after losing his own house in a fire, Vickery and his wife, LaVonda, are in the final stages of getting ready to move into their newly built home.

It’s been an exhausting year and a half for the McCalla couple, but they can see the finish line approaching. Life for the Vickerys changed around 2 a.m. on Oct. 19, 2022. The fan keeping their bedroom cool suddenly shut off, and Jonathan Vickery said he quickly realized the power was out throughout the house.

After a quick inspection, Vickery’s firefighter instincts kicked in, and he knew exactly what the problem was — their house was on fire.

“It sounded like rain on a tin roof, but I recognized it because of doing what I do for a living. It sounded like crackling to me,” Vickery said. “I said, ‘I think the house is on fire,’ and about that time I got out of bed, and the smoke alarms started going off.”

Many months after the fire, Vickery can still recall his actions over the next few hours, as he relied on his training to guide him through the process. Realizing the fire was in the attic, he instructed his wife to grab some clothes and start making calls while he ran around to the back of the house to start spraying the upper portion of the house with water.

“I told my wife, ‘Tell them we’re going to need this fire department, that fire department,’ because I knew it was going to be a big fire once I knew it was in the attic,” he said. “We had a big attic at that point, and knowing fire behavior, if it gets in that big open space, it’s just going to run.”

About 10 minutes later, the McCalla Fire Department arrived. Vickery explained he was a firefighter himself and instructed them where the fire was and how to approach it, while also helping to fight the blaze.

Soon, other trucks arrived and more personnel worked to control the fire. However, it soon became evident to Vickery that they were fighting a losing battle and that he had to break the news to his wife.

“We gave it a valiant effort. They came back outside and said, ‘We can’t get to it. We can’t put a stop to it,’” he said. “By that point, it had run the whole top of the attic and was shooting out the top of the roof, which was 25 to 30 feet in the air. That’s around the time I realized they’re not going to save our house.

“I had to tell her, ‘We’re fixing to lose it all,’ which was really heart-wrenching. I knew they were doing everything they could,” Vickery said. “You really don’t know what to do at that point, so it’s really just looking at it and having our moment with each other and being thankful that we still have each other.”

Vickery joined the VHFD in 2015, after several years working in other departments throughout the state. He started his career in Vestavia Hills at Station 1 on Montgomery Highway near the Chick-fil-A, eventually transferring to Station 4 in Liberty Park not long after the fire that destroyed his home.

Also an emergency medical technician, Vickery is accustomed to being on the other end of a call, whether it’s controlling a house fire or attending to a medical emergency. However, once news spread throughout the department that his house had caught fire and was a total loss, Vickery learned that being a firefighter isn’t just a career — it’s a brotherhood.

By 7:30 that same morning, Vickery said the city “shut his crew down” and allowed them to help him and his wife sift through the debris for any salvageable items.

My guys are still supportive of me as far as checking on anything I need. We all have some kind of trade. I got guys that know how to do certain things, and they’ll say, ‘Hey, I’ll come help you do that if you’re doing it yourself.’

Jonathan Vickery

“They just got the ball rolling and getting us situated,” he said.

The rebuilding process has been a challenge due to the rapid increase in the cost of construction materials, equipment and labor over the last three years, Vickery said. While he is content with the fact that their new house won’t quite be as nice as the original, he has been able to stretch the insurance dollars by doing much of the work himself and relying on his fellow Vestavia Hills firefighters, who have been at his side and offered as much help as possible.

“The process to get us started was very difficult,” he said. “To save money, I tore the whole house down myself. Luckily, I knew how to run heavy equipment, so I just rented an excavator and found a company to line up dumpsters for me, and I spent about a week running that sunup to sundown, filling dumpsters. You never imagine that your whole life fit in six dumpsters, but it does.

“My guys are still supportive of me as far as checking on anything I need, “Vickery said. “We all have some kind of trade. I got guys that know how to do certain things, and they’ll say, ‘Hey, I’ll come help you do that if you’re doing it yourself.’”

Vickery said one colleague in particular, Mike Kelly, helped make rebuilding a reality. A general contractor in addition to his work as a firefighter, Kelly agreed to oversee the project for nominal fees, allowing the Vickerys to focus on healing from the trauma as well as getting the construction process off the ground in August 2023.

“He was our saving grace,” Vickery said. “He stepped up and said, ‘I can do this for you and help you out.’”

Now, with the house almost ready for occupancy, Vickery said he is eager for him and his wife to put the fire behind them and move on with their lives. He said LaVonda still finds it difficult to talk about, while he tends to be more pragmatic about the events, especially considering his line of work. However, even he admits that it’s hard at times for him as well.

“I’m a shoot-straight kind of guy,” he said. “It’s like I told my wife, ‘We can’t dwell on it. We have to look forward.’”