Relient K Elaborates the Details of Their Tour Bus Fire

The band wrote the following [long] blog, and they say it all well, so let's get to it:

So, for any of you that don't know, the majority of our bus and trailer burned down on the shoulder of a Pennsylvania Turnpike around 3am on 6/28. We all escaped the blaze unscathed, and stood on the side of the road, staring wide-eyed (some of us without shoes) at the massive flames consuming what we assumed to be most of our possessions. We were uncertain if the bus was going to cinematically explode, so we watched from a healthy distance. All of us were so happy to be alive, but we quickly took that for granted, and began lamenting over our stuff. "I had my computer bag in my hand, and I dropped it to flee the bus! Why didn't I just bring it!?" someone said. "Why didn't I just grab my phone!? I always grab my phone!" someone else exclaimed. Our guitar tech, Sam, had eight years of hand written writings (he's an author) in his bag. We all accepted that Sam's loss was probably the greatest. I, too, had a computer in the bus that had a lot of unfinished writing. All of it was backed up, but my backups were also torched in the fire. We assumed all was lost, but a fire truck came to the scene after about twenty minutes, and began to extinguish the flames. After a while (including an almost beautiful scene of a fireman, crouched on top of our bus, back lit by fire, hacking a hole into the roof with an ax, and putting a hose through the hole to cut off the fire from reaching the front of the bus), the inferno was extinguished, and we were allowed to walk to the the bus to retrieve some items that weren't burned. The front luggage compartment of the bus was untouched, and a few of us had suitcases down there. Those that did had some clothes, but they smelled so strongly of smoke that they weren't wearable until given a good dry-cleaning. We were all standing around bummed about our stuff, but we kept a positive attitude, because we realized there was nothing we could do about it.

The thing that bothered us the most was that we were going to have to miss the Cornerstone Music Festival (our favorite summer fest that we've played the last six years in a row). There's no getting another chance at this year's Cstone, and we really wanted to play.

Around 6am, a tow-truck company brought a school bus out to the side of the road and picked us up. We all went to a Comfort Inn, and tried to sleep. We were all exhausted ('fried'), but it was hard to get the images and reality of what just happened out of our heads. You could say they were 'burned' into our minds. Haha. The next day, we woke up and took a rental van to Walmart. We grabbed some toothbrushes and socks and undies to distribute amongst ourselves. Then, we drove out to the junk yard where our bus and trailer were towed. As you can tell by the pictures, it was pretty crazy to look at all the damage and realize that we were riding in that bus less than eight hours before. After examining the wreckage, all of us were finding things that we had written off as burned or lost, but they weren't; An iPod here, a computer there. Things were looking better than we assumed they'd be. Sam ended up finding all of his writings smoke damaged, but legible. Needless to say, he's going to scan them into a computer and back them up now.

Also, about 85% of our gear was fine. This discovery was HUGE. That meant that we wouldn't have to worry about replacing guitars, amps, and the other millions of little things we had in our gear cases. Dave's drum kit didn't quite survive, and every single T-shirt and cd were ruined (haha... burned cds!), but we thought the total damage was going to be insurmountable. It wasn't. However, its unfortunate that we were playing some big shows that weekend. Otherwise, the merch wouldn't have been in such bulk. Even though the majority of the "band" stuff was okay, there were still a ton of personal items that were going to be difficult to replace. A lot of people lost cell phones, computers, clothing, etc. I had personally been living out of a suitcase for a month. I lost everything that I had brought with me (an exception could be said of my iPod. It was damaged, but it wasn't a complete loss), and what I had brought with me was a lot.

This brings me to the reason I started writing about this in the first place. Its all fine and good to say, "At least we all made it out safely, that's the only thing that's important", and that IS obviously how we all feel. However, I kept talking about how stuff is just stuff, and how material things are only ours to be taken away at some point. That IS what I think. But, for some reason, my heart wasn't really on the same page with what I was thinking and saying. For the first few days after the incident, all I could think about was replenishing what I had lost. All I wanted was to have my eight years of photos , my shirts, my phone, and all of my other stuff back. I would go in and out of phases of being almost depressed about it. Then it hit me. I can say whatever I want, but when it comes down to it, I think I'm virtually chained to my possessions. I feel incomplete without a cell phone. I feel deprived if I don't have a functioning computer. I feel desperate to rebuild my entire, fragile, empire of "stuff," because I don't know how to live without it, and that scares me. I've been thinking about how we aren't entitled to our things. Frankly, it's not some God-given right for us to own a bunch of stuff. It's a blessing to live in a place where we can work hard and reward ourselves with those comforts. I was blessed to have a cell phone in the first place. In the same way, I'm blessed to have two arms, two legs, ears, eyes, and so on. Nothing is a guarantee, and the truth of the matter is, the most important things in life, are, in fact, our lives themselves.

 

It almost seems like too much of a coincidence that just hours before all of this happened, we were hanging out with our buddies in Switchfoot (who we're touring with this fall), and we were discussing some ideas of how to incorporate Habitat For Humanity into the tour. How interesting, that we were thinking about those who had suffered much greater losses than the one we were about to experience in less than four hours. If this night's tale was a work of fiction, this time with Switchfoot would have been foreshadowing. Maybe God was trying to plant some thoughts in our heads, maybe He wanted us to experience a bit of loss ourselves before we tried to pretend to know what other victims of tragedy go through. I guess we can at least accept it as some perspective. Anyway, at a later date, we're going to reveal a couple of the ways we're going to make it fun and easy to donate time/money to Habitat For Humanity (one way will be as easy as buying a ticket to the show). It' s a cause that helps people rebuild one of the most essential things you can lose. The essentials are; food, clothes, and shelter. Hmmm... I bet if my shelter was destroyed, I wouldn't be so bummed about a cell phone.

 

Anyway, enough rambling. We appreciate everyone's thoughts, prayers, concerned messages, and willingness to donate gear, money, etc... (we're glad we haven't had to accept any of that). We love you all.

 

Matthew Thiessen & the rest of Relient K