LEWISTON – It has been a year of rebuilding for a family whose home burned to its foundation last Christmas Eve.

Around 10 p.m. last Dec. 24, as the Langeliers were on their way home, something caught on fire in their empty lakeside house. In minutes, their home was destroyed.

Bert and Deedra Langelier, their 15-year-old son, Gregg, and 17-year-old daughter, Victoria, watched the fire engines speed to the blaze as they were returning from a Christmas Eve celebration at Bert’s brother’s home.

Firefighters were unable to do much because their trucks had trouble getting down the ice-covered dirt road to the Langeliers’ house. The nearest hydrant was miles away and No Name Pond was frozen.

“We were standing outside and Bert said to me, ‘What we have on our backs is all we’ve got to ourselves,”‘ Deedra said.

The Langeliers spent Christmas with Deedra’s parents, but the holiday was solemn. Members of the family kept leaving to be alone. Sobs could be heard.

On the day after Christmas, the family began sifting through the ashes. Only the cement foundation remained.

Deedra recalled the family’s reaction and sense of loss, and the months of grief. Dealing with the loss and coming back is “harder than people know,” she said.

The family moved into an Auburn condominium a few hundred yards from a fire station. They pursued counseling. Friends and relatives gave them money and local shop owners gave them clothes.

“You’d think it would be easy to accept help, but it’s not,” Victoria said. “It doesn’t feel right. You need to let people help you, though.”

In April, on the same plot of land above No Name Pond where their old home was located, they began building a new home. Bert did the wiring, plumbing and much of the carpentry himself. His father-in-law did the finish work.

In August, the family moved in. And with Christmas coming, they have the home’s first tree. The Langeliers have rooms of their own and new belongings and pets.

Only Bert seems unhurt by the fire and its impact.

“I guess I’m not real materialistic,” he said. “Everybody survived. That’s all that mattered to me.”