Wednesday, August 19, 2026
By Russ Lay | Outer Banks Voice on February 26, 2013
It was just another night for Mike and Kathleen Reilly.
“We were playing cards”, Kathleen remembers. “We play every night.”
Taking a break from the game, Kathleen got up to make coffee and get some cake while Mike went outside to walk the dog.
When Mike returned and they sat down to play, Kathleen smelled something. So did Mike.
“It wasn’t an alarming smell, it was almost sweet” she said. “We kept playing cards and about ten minutes later I turned around and saw flames outside, reaching from the lower deck to the second story.”
The Reillys had less than two minutes to get out. Kathleen grabbed their dog and her cell phone. Other than the clothes they were wearing, that was all they took.
Mike tried to re-enter the house to find their other pet, a beloved cat, but was turned back by the flames and in his own words: “I barely made it back out.”
In less than five minutes their south Nags Head residence was consumed by fire.
Nags Head firemen told them they could see the flames as they left the station and immediately requested backup, knowing this was going to be a containment situation rather than an attempt to save a home.
The fire also took out the south end of their neighbor’s house and gutted the inside, along with their neighbor’s boat. The Reilleys’ cars were destroyed.
When the Reillys left a message for us to contact them, our first thought was that they wanted to relate the details of the fire.
But Mike and Kathleen had another purpose in mind.
“We not only want to thank all of the people who have helped us since the fire. We want the media to tell our story,” Mike told us in a phone call.
A few days later we sat down with the couple at the Nags Head Golf Links clubhouse.
By their smiles, demeanor and sense of humor, one would never have guessed that just days ago they had lost everything they owned, including pictures and mementos of their life, children and travels.
Instead, Kathleen greets us with a humorous anecdote.
“Have you ever thought about how you go about re-establishing your identity when you have no documents?” she asked.
In today’s world you don’t exist unless you have identification and all of that was lost in the fire. The day after they went to the DMV to obtain new driver’s licenses.
They had a bank statement that the DMV would accept. But then the person asked them for a picture ID.
“We lost all of our picture IDs in the fire. Can’t you pull up our old license information?”
“We kept thinking out of the box and we thought the police can pull up those license pictures on their vehicle computers, so we stopped by the Nags Head police department,” Kathleen said.
An officer there pulled up their information, printed copies and the Reillys were back at the DMV to get their licenses.
“When I know I am getting a picture made, I put on makeup, make sure my hair is nice and I’m dressed nicely. We looked like bag people. I didn’t even have a hairbrush!” she said.
As lunch arrives, the Reillys turn to the nice things that happened.
One neighbor, a part-time resident was coming over the dune from the beach as the Reillys were leaving the house. He was already calling 911, and as Kathleen looked around, so were other neighbors who had gathered outside.
This was the first of numerous outpourings of support from not only the Outer Banks community, but from folks from as far away as Florida who heard about the fire from local friends or relatives who learned about the fire online.
Neighbors who also own a rental house in the neighborhood opened their home to them that very night and have loaned them the rental until the first seasonal tenants arrive.
The next morning the community began to offer help.
“The man who came off the beach doesn’t live here full time, but he brought over some of his wife’s old clothes for me to wear,” Kathleen recalls.
People came over and tried to offer them money, which Kathleen found “a little weird, taking money from strangers.”
Another neighbor brought over two Mason jars of soup, a quilt someone else had made and all those little things one needs to start all over: bread, butter, salt, pepper, napkins, “even those little dishwasher pods,” Kathleen says.
For a week, dinner would arrive every day at five o’clock. Kathleen says, “not just casseroles, but full dinners, real food! With salads and dessert!”
The Reillys noted “people were thinking of things we would need before we knew ourselves we would need them.”
Next, bags of clothes and shoes began showing up. Some were used, but Kathleen said many were new and still had tags on them. “We were just amazed.”
Other friends and neighbors invited the Reilly’s over to “closet shop” clothes from their homes.
What came next was almost incomprehensible to the couple.
“We started getting gift cards. Some came from friends, but others were delivered to our friends’ homes from places like Virginia and Florida. We have no idea who those folks are; we think they must be friends and family of our local neighbors and friends,” Kathleen said.
The gift cards were exactly the kind one might need after a fire. “We had cards from CVS, Food Lion, Harris Teeter and even Belk’s. You don’t realize how important a drug store is until you’ve lost everything those stores normally stock,” she said.
Kathleen is also an avid baker and serves on the advisory board of the company that makes her favorite flour — King Arthur.
One of their neighbors contacted the company and pointed to pictures of their lost home. King Arthur responded with a $100 gift certificate.
Many stores offered employee discounts at the Outer Banks Mall as the Reillys began restocking clothing, kitchen gadgets and other items.
The Blue Moon restaurant picked up their tab when they stopped in for lunch.
Mike Reilly is an avid reader and a frequent user of the Kill Devil Hills library. Two books he had borrowed burned in the fire and when he stopped by to pay for the titles the library not only refused payment, they had also gathered books by his favorite author he had not yet read and had them ready for him.
Kathleen had praise for her local insurance agent at Vogedes. “We’ve been with them for 24 years and they are just amazing.”
They found a note in their mailbox inform their carrier, who asked asked “if you guys are OK” and assured the Reillys they were holding their mail for them rather than leave it unattended.
Ironically, even though two houses were destroyed in the fire as well as a boat, their mailbox, a Rubbermaid, somehow was left standing.
Mike also had some humorous recollections. He was scheduled to play golf the day after the fire. He called his partner and left a voice mail that he wouldn’t be playing that morning.
Then he remembered his partner had left his clubs in Mike’s car, which was destroyed in the fire. He called his friend back and informed him he wouldn’t be playing either. Later, he discovered his friend had also left his wallet and cell phone in Mike’s car.
Shortly after the fire, Mike left the house wearing a mishmash of borrowed clothes. To be precise, he was attired in gray sweatpants, a Princeton sweatshirt with a large tiger on the back and a pair of crocs.
His son, a banker, came down from Raleigh and seeing he needed a coat, loaned him his dress coat. It was missing one button, but his son told him when it was buttoned up no one would notice.
Later that day, Mike and his wife ran into friends and he asked his friend what one of them thought of his sartorial splendor. “You’re one button short of perfection,” he replied.
Even during the lunch interview, friends who had not seen them since the fire approached the table, asked if they needed anything and offered rides if they required transportation.
As the conversation wound to a close we talked about small town life. Sometimes in a small town people know too much about our personal lives.
But Kathleen said since the fire, all she can think of is “all of the good.”
“We lost pictures, mementos from our life together,” she said. “We’ve been all over the world. But that’s all just stuff. It’s the people here who make the difference.”
Mike summed it up: “Where the hell would we be without the neighbors, friends and strangers who helped us out?”
