RANGELEY – It’s been one thing after another for a couple of Rangeley children who are hoping things will be okay this Christmas, a Christmas that won’t be spent in their own home.

Fire destroyed much of their Harold Ross Road home in Dallas Plantation on Nov. 19.

Patricia Fay and her children, Emma, 11, and Elijah, 9, are staying at a friend’s house while hoping that soon they will have a cleaned, restored kitchen and living room and newly built bedrooms so they can return home.

Meanwhile, family friend and school social worker Holly Austin is trying to find donated building materials to help make that happen. A question over Fay’s house insurance lapsing has exhausted help from there for now but the children’s father is willing and capable of rebuilding if some donated materials can be found, Austin said.

The bedrooms and an upstairs apartment were destroyed, said fire Chief Rudy Davis on Monday. An early morning fire, started from a wood stove in the upstairs apartment-type area, burned the top section of the house and left a portion of the first floor and basement with a lot of water damage, he said.

Fay was able to wake her children and escape the home safely with the family dog. Their cat showed up the next day. But most of her possessions are gone. Beds, bureaus, pillows, blankets and toys, everything in their bedrooms, Fay said.

She has felt overwhelmed by the fire and dealing with the effects of lung disease. She owned a natural food market, the Root Cellar, in Rangeley before ill health forced her to let it go, she said.

“There’s no light at the end of the tunnel,” she said she told Austin, who responded by telling her, “The light is there. We just got to find it.”

It has been a difficult year for her and her children, Fay said. While trying to help her sister through cancer treatments this summer, a sister who played a key role as an aunt to her children, she went through an upsetting end to a relationship. Then, just when she thought the kids were settling down and things were going to be all right, their puppy was run over by a car. Then they learned their grandmother has cancer. Now, the fire has traumatized them again, she added.

The children have experienced and survived other trials, she said. A son was run over by a tractor in 2005. That showed her daughter’s wisdom and strength, as she ran over a mile out of the woods that day to dial 911 and remained calmer than most adults while speaking to a dispatcher, Fay said.

“People love my kids. People are always calling me to tell me how incredibly kind they are,” Fay said. “My son has such a big heart. I keep telling him kindness comes back and he can already see what kindness does.”

For more information about donations of building materials or household items, contact Austin at 864-3311, ext. 100.