Fire!

Last night we had a fire in our condos (watch the video for my live action coverage!). My next door neighbor, a elderly woman, called me around 11:00 pm because she thought she smelled something burning upstairs. I went over to check it out and sure enough, there was the slightest smell of smoke. I checked all over her condo and couldn't find anything and finally ventured out back to look and noticed that it was coming from the condo on the other side of her (we live in a 4 plex.....like a duplex but with four units). We went out front at the same time the neighbor came out saying her house was on fire. We called 911 and within minutes we had probably 8 or 10 fire trucks roaring down the street. I ran back inside my condo to get Abbey and grab my cat, which I quickly locked in my car to keep him from running away. My condo and my next door neighbors condo were not damaged, but we had to prop our doors open to clear the smoke out. My neighbor had bad enough smoke damage that she has to stay away for a few days, but Abbey and I just have a lingering smoke smell and have been keeping the doors open as much as possible to clear it.

The fire was in my neighbors kitchen and she was fine, but all of her belongings were ruined. The firemen got the fire out pretty quickly, but then they stayed until almost 3:00 am doing demolition on her place. I guess I've never watched a fire before, because I didn't realize that was part of their job! The carried all of her furniture out, then appliances, cabinets, drywall, ceiling, everything until there was nothing left but the walls. It was very sad to watch everything she owned being piled on her front lawn!

The only good thing that came from this was that I got to meet a few more neighbors. Since I live in a neighborhood where we don't have to do yardwork and there are very few children, if any, there isn't a lot of opportunities to interact with the neighbors and I haven't done a good job of meeting many of them. I check on my next door neighbor occasionally, but that's about it. I felt awful that this other neighbor was having this fire two houses down and I didn't even know her name! We wave and say hello, but that's about it. Some Red Cross voluteers came and spoke with her and made arrangments for her to go to a hotel for three nights. By the time the demolition was dying down (around 2:30 am) all the other neighbors had gone back home except for Abbey and I. We were still airing out my house and watching the firemen work. So the Red Cross volunteers came to talk with us and explained that my neighbor didn't have any family or friends she could think of to call and they were worried about leaving her alone. I was thankful that though I had failed as a good neighbor up to this point, we had this short opportunity to help in a small way then. We brought her to our house and talked for a little bit and made sure she got to the hotel okay. And I was able to find out the name of the church she attends and gave them a call today. Please pray for her though, because she has lost all of her belongings (even her purse and wallet were destroyed in the fire!). Abbey said her daughter came by today looking for her, so hopefully that will be someone who can help too.

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