Tuesday, August 9, 2011

The Fire

     I was reading some one's blog and they had had a small fire with minor damage. They went on to share how her sister had a fire and lost their whole house and contents. Luckily they were not home when it happened. Lightning struck their house and no one noticed the flames until it was too late.
     We had a fire almost 10 years ago. We were lucky too, but not because we weren't home we where and it was the middle of the night. I am convinced God woke my up. It was approximately 3:30am.  The morning of December 17, 2001. We were asleep upstairs. "Something" (God) woke me up, I realized smoke was coming up the stairs and the house was totally dark no alarm clock lights etc. I woke up my husband and said I thought the house was on fire. He tried the phone and of course it was dead. He pulled on pants ran across the street to pound on the neighbors door and told them to call the fire department.
    They told us to come in and get warm. We have a volunteer fire department so they had to call people in. I am amazed at how fast they got there. I told them I thought it was in the basement. How I knew that I am not sure, it was pitch black in the house. They went in and found the ceiling of the basement beginning to burn. There was a huge amount of "toxic" smoke.
     Our bedroom was on the top floor not main floor and fire was in basement. How did I know the fire was there? How did I wake up? Thankfully there was more smoke damaged than fire damage. It did take out our electricity because where the fire started was near the fuse box. It also took out our water system because our well and pump was in the basement.
     The cause of the fire was a dehumidifier. The fire investigator tried to get a number off of it and it was so badly burned it was unreadable. It was an inexpensive one from Walmart.
     The fire was out in a short time. We called our married daughter and she came right away. We went to her house and discussed what to do. We could not go in to see damage. Plus it was still dark. My daughter and I had planned to do Christmas shopping later that day. When my husband and I got to my daughters, we realized how very, very lucky we were to be alive. Because it was the middle of winter, flames would not have been seen for a long time and by then the smoke and "toxic" fumes would have killed us. Another lucky thing was that during this time our son and his 3 children were living with us. He shared custody with his ex-wife and it was not his week to have the kids so they were not there that night and he had spent the night with a friend.
      My daughter, son-in-law and their 5 kids lived in a big farm house. They offered to put us all up as long as necessary. That now made 13 people sharing a house. It was interesting. We did it. It is amazing what you can do when you have to.
     I took time off work and went to the house as often as I could to go through things and throw items into the huge dumpster that they put in our front yard. There was no heat, electricity, or water for quite awhile. They got a little electricity hooked up but still no heat or water. When I would call the "clean-up" place to check on progress because many days they were not there to do anything. I was told----"Mrs. Miller, you picked a bad time to have a fire"----REALLY oh next time I will call you first before I have a fire to make sure it is ok with you. They were overbooked and ran into other delays, but did not have the honesty to say up front they were running behind. They kept saying oh a couple more weeks, etc, but it ran a lot longer!! It ended up being 2 1/2 months before we could move back home.
     Oh and the "toxic" fumes-the basement was my craft area and I had lots of supplies stored in plastic bins. They don't burn they melt and release the toxic fumes. Again we were blessed by God's care. The items lost we  were able to replace and we were safe.