Rustic Ridge family that lost home to explosion awaits completion of new house

As Rick and Beth Napoleon planned their new house in Plum’s Rustic Ridge neighborhood, they knew it had to be different.

“With every decision, we’re pretty much trying to do the complete opposite of the last house,” Rick Napoleon said. “Every decision is the opposite. We want something new, different memories.”

The first home they owned together as husband and wife, and where they raised three sons over 18 years, was damaged beyond repair in August by the explosion of Paul and Heather Oravitz’s house across the street. The ensuing fire destroyed three houses: the Oravitz home and the ones on either side.

While many more homes in the area required months of extensive repairs, the Napoleons’ house, directly across Rustic Ridge Drive, was the only one that could not be saved.

Their new house is taking shape on the same site. If their builder, Barry O’Block, completes the house by early August as he hopes, it would be just before the first anniversary of the disaster in which six of the Napoleons’ neighbors were killed.

Heather Oravitz, 51, died that day, along with four friends and neighbors who had been in their home: Mike Thomas, 57; Kevin Sebunia, 55; and father and son Casey Clontz, 38, and Keegan Clontz, 12. Paul Oravitz, 56, died four days later.

Of all the changes the Napoleons are making to their new house, the most significant might be the complete removal of the front porch in favor of a back deck. Where they had once waved to neighbors walking by and watched children learning to ride bicycles, Napoleon says he just can’t see them sitting there anymore, looking across the road at three empty lots where their neighbors’ homes once stood.

The damage to the Napoleons’ house was so severe that, in the days after the explosion, they were allowed to enter the home to retrieve precious possessions only if it wasn’t too windy. The wind whips through that part of the housing plan often enough that O’Block is putting extra nails in the roof shingles of the new house.

Not even the old house’s foundation could be reused. Testing and ruminating over whether it was usable held up the start of the home’s construction by about two months, Napoleon said.

The driveway and a brick column containing the mailbox and street number at its end are the only parts of the old house remaining.

As Napoleon has watched his neighbors repair their homes, he has noticed others have made changes, too.

Across the road, Lori Ebaugh said she changed her home to make it feel different. That included changing the siding from a pale gray to a darker color.

Living a house down from the explosion with her son, Jamison, 10, Ebaugh said she wasn’t sure at first that she would return, but she missed her home, the only one her son has known. They returned May 19 after living for nine months in a rental in Holiday Park.

“I’m happy to be home and happy to see other people returning. It’s been a long nine months for us,” she said. “Almost everybody is coming back.”

The Napoleons’ new home, across Rustic Ridge Drive and just up the hill a bit, looks “beautiful,” she said.

“That house is flying up,” she said. “They are really getting that house up quick. I’m happy they get to return, too.”

Lori Voltz, an architectural designer who lives in Rustic Ridge, has worked with O’Block for more than 30 years and designed the Napoleons’ new house.

“I didn’t want them to feel like they were in the same house. I totally flipped the living space,” she said. “I was very determined to give them what they wanted. You want them to have everything. They’ve been through a lot.”

Napoleon said Voltz was tremendous in helping them design the house, which O’Block said will blend in with the rest of Rustic Ridge.

“We wanted to keep it simple,” Napoleon said. “We just kind of wanted what we had. We told Lori what we had, but our concept for how we wanted it had to be moved around so it was a little different.”

While fitting in the same footprint as the old house, the new one has three bedrooms instead of four — their oldest son, Anthony, has graduated college and is living in West Virginia.

They took out the dining room, since they didn’t use it, for a bigger family room.

They moved the living room and the kitchen. The stairs are in different directions. The natural gas fireplace doesn’t have a hearth or chimney.

Like Ebaugh’s house, the siding will be dark instead of light. The old house had shutters; the new one doesn’t.

But as he stood in the garage recently, the floor still uneven gravel and the upper floors wooden mazes, Napoleon was flooded with memories of what was.

“I see my old house with every room,” he said.

After getting married in 1997, Rick, 53, and Beth, 50, lived in Maryland for a few years before returning to the Pittsburgh area, living in apartments and then staying with family while they saved to build their dream house in Plum.

They made the move to Rustic Ridge in 2005, when Anthony was 4, their second son, Andrew, was 1, and their youngest, Jack, was just a spare room with an idea.

Napoleon remembers bringing home Jack, who is now 17 and will be a senior at Plum High School in the fall.

“That house was the history of our family,” he said. “Everything happened there.”

And his wife was there, bearing witness, when their dream house was torn down. Napoleon didn’t want to see it.

The Napoleons haven’t spent a night in Rustic Ridge since the explosion. After living with family, they’ve been in a rental house in Murrysville, which is close enough for Napoleon to make regular visits to the construction site.

“I still feel sort of like a visitor driving in,” he said.

Napoleon doesn’t know how long they’ll stay in the new house. They expect Andrew to follow Anthony to West Virginia, where Andrew also is in college, so they might move there.

He says their plan is to live in the new house for at least five years and then reassess — or they could stay there the rest of their lives.

Napoleon says he is looking forward to moving into the house and returning to Rustic Ridge.

“I’m excited about it,” he said. “It’s a return to normalcy.”

The return may be hardest on Beth and Jack, who were home when the explosion happened.

“I don’t know what my wife and son will be like that first night,” Napoleon said. “I don’t know if we’ll be there a week, five years or what.”