JAFFREY — After a fire destroyed her Hadley Road home last summer, Carmen Van Blarcom pressed forward with plans to host a family reunion out of sheer determination.

On the weekend of July 30 to Aug. 1, Carmen and her husband, Ed Van Blarcom, opened their newly rebuilt home to about 40 family members from near and far. The house had been rebuilt from the ground up, following the electrical fire at the Van Blarcom home last year.

“I was determined I was going to do it one way or the other, even if I didn’t have a house,” Carmen said of the family reunion that was her turn to host this year. “I had my house all ready for this reunion and I had to start all over.”

When fire broke out in the basement on the evening of June 27, 2009, Carmen said she and Ed had just come in from doing some yard work and were about to start eating dinner. They had been working both indoors and out for some time, preparing the home they’ve owned since 1968 and raised their two sons in for the reunion.

Zeke, the family dog, was the only one hurt in the fire, she said.

“We got out in time,” Carmen said, “and my dog got out, but [Zeke] went back in looking for me,” after she went to get help.

Later, she said, “I kept calling him. ... And, he jumped out the front door all on fire.”

Ed and a bystander rolled Zeke in the grass to stop the flames, but Zeke wasn’t breathing. Carmen said Ed brought the Labrador retriever and Norwegian elk hound mix back to life with an oxygen tank from the garage. The 13-year-old dog sustained third-degree burns and still suffers from the effects of smoke inhalation.

“He’s a survivor,” Carmen said.

The Van Blarcoms lost pretty much everything, including all their family photos, in the fire at their two-story cape, Carmen said, but their insurance covered nearly everything involved in building the one-story ranch they have today.

“They even had to put in a new foundation,” she said.

Firefighters at the scene managed to save a few antiques from the home, she noted, as well as her pocketbook, but the fire was really going by the time emergency responders arrived and the home couldn’t be saved.

Prior to the fire, the Van Blarcoms had planned a one-week trip to Alaska and decided to go ahead with the plan once the fire displaced them. After returning, they lived with one of their sons in Rindge for a while and then at the home of an associate in Rindge. They also spent a lot of time during the day camped out in their garage, which survived the fire. It was six-and-half months before the Van Blarcoms could move back home to Hadley Road. They returned home on Dec. 3, 2009.

“That felt really good,” Carmen recalled.

It wasn’t an easy time after the fire, she said, but her family helped her through it. For example, her sister-in-law, Helen Coll of Jaffrey, made her and Ed a new family album of photos to replace the lost ones, and some of Carmen and Ed’s wedding pictures, too. Their grandniece, Sarah Hautanen, 16, of Troy, presented them with a painting of their former cape during the family reunion.

“Oh, we didn’t know anything about it,” Carmen said of the painting. “Everyone was in tears.”

Carmen feels good that she and her husband went through with their plan to host the reunion. She said they couldn’t have done it without the support of their family.