Fire!

[BevH]

I have told some of you about the fire our house sustained. It was one year ago tonight and I thought I'd share some pictures.

 

We weren't allowed to go into the house until the next morning, and this is what we saw:

 

 

 

And this is all that remained of my 2002 Mustang, which was right next to where the fire started:

 

 

 

And here is a brief description I wrote a few days after the fire:

 

My DH, Gary, and I are at home with the 3 dogs. Our 3 daughters are out for the night. Gary is upstairs watching "Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle" and I'm in the basement playing a game on my computer. (Note: the game was BG 2 and I was using Kelsey for the first time. ~ B ) The time is approximately 8:30 p.m.

 

I hear Gary yell something at me from upstairs. Like the dutiful wife I am, I ignore him.    A few minutes later, he yells again, this time I decide I'd better find out what he wants, save my game, and head upstairs. As I reach the family room, which is still downstairs from where Gary is, he yells at me, "FIRE! Get the dogs!"

 

I call for the dogs, run the rest of the way up and get my sheltie, Tiffany, and my daughter's beagle, Cassie, out the back door. Cassie promptly runs back inside and downstairs. In the meantime, I can't find the puppy, Missie. I left the basement door open and was afraid she'd gone down there. So I start to run upstairs, why I don't know, but halfway up, Gary asks if I've called the fire department. So I run back down, grab the cordless and dial 911. After the call, I turn around and see two little heads poking up from behind the coffee table. Missie makes a beeline for her kennel, so I shut the door and start to carry her upstairs. Gary grabs her from me and tries to get me to go, but a tell him that Cassie is still downstairs. Running back downstairs, I scoop up Cassie and head upstairs again, by this time I'm REALLY sick of those stairs! Gary and I head outside and across the street, the main floor of the house is already getting quite thick with smoke.

 

After making an attempt to get Tiffany out of the backyard (firemen wouldn't allow it), Gary finally gets the chance to tell me what happened. As I said, he was watching the movie, when he heard what sounded like a fireplace when it crackles. We'd had trouble with kids across the street on 4th of July throwing sparkler bombs in our yard, so that's what Gary thought it might be. He went outside to look and saw smoke coming from the garage. He ran back inside, opened the door from the dining room into the garage and saw flames - it was pretty well involved already at that point. The popping sound he heard was most likely the couple of dozen cans of spray paint he had stored right about where the fire started.

 

The fire turned out to be a 5-alarm blaze, with one fireman getting injured, although not too severely. It was 11:00 p.m. before the fire was completely out and the fire department stayed through the night to make sure it didn't flare up again and to keep possible looters away.

 

Oh, and the funny part - me running up and down those stairs all those times! Not big on the exercise...

[julwise]

Oh, how sad! Hope things are fairly back in order by now!

[Dancer Fitz]

I'm glad you managed a safe if slapstick retreat back then. How have things turned out since the fire?

[Meira]

That's terrible! It's good that you were not sleeping when the fire started. I hope that things are ok now.

[BigRob]

Nasty damage there, especially to the car. But you got out alive and at least the house wasn't reduced to a smoking crater, so there's some sort of upside there.

[BevH]

Oh,  how sad! Hope things are fairly back in order by now!

Thanks, and yes, things are pretty much in order now. I'll post a couple of after pictures tomorrow.

[BevH]

I'm glad you managed a safe if slapstick retreat back then. How have things turned out since the fire?

Going through the process of rebuilding was a major headache to be sure. For instance, only half the roof had to be re-done and so they said they'd get shingles to match - only the guy that picked them must have been color blind - they were GREEN! On the upside, we did get all the changes we wanted in the kitchen and the main bathroom. We were also majorly unhappy with the flooring people. They couldn't seem to follow simple instructions and then didn't want to refund our money for their mistake. (Yes, this was one change we were paying for ourselves.) It still doesn't seem like home yet though. I'm getting the urge to paint a room...

[BevH]

  That's terrible! It's good that you were not sleeping when the fire started. I hope that things are ok now.

Thanks for the good wishes! And, no, not sleeping, but ready for bed when it happened - which is all the clothes I had - till I could go SHOPPING! I always try to find the bright points, which was hard this time. But still, I kept saying, why do people advertise garage sales when they're not selling the garage.

[BevH]

Nasty damage there, especially to the car. But you got out alive and at least the house wasn't reduced to a smoking crater, so there's some sort of upside there. 

To be sure... We did briefly consider selling, but realized all we'd get is the price of the land. So, we rebuilt, or probably more correctly, remodeled.