Fire!

Woke up yesterday and went about business as usual until my husband and I stepped out the door - hubby to change the tires on my car and myself to take our daughter to nursery school - when we saw our neighbor (an older couple who live kitty-corner to us) outside. The old man was trying to break the glass to his house and the old woman was calling out, "Fire! Please call the fire department!" I was a little confused at first, then ran to pick up the phone, dialed the emergency number and handed the phone over to hubby. He told me to just take our daughter to school and when I walked down a bit further, I saw huge flames from the back side of the house (kitchen, maybe?) and it was spreading onto the lawn of the neighboring house! By now, huge clouds of black smoke was going up and I saw some people starting to come outside of their houses. About 3/4 way to school (the school is about 4 blocks down the road .. it usually takes us about 7-10 minutes to walk there), we saw the fire engines coming, so at least they were pretty fast.

I sent my daughter off and started walking back. More and more people were rushing down the street to the burning house by this time. By the time I got there, the house was pretty much going down in flames. My husband and several other men were trying to pry the garage adjacent to the house open to get the car out so it doesn't explode should the fire spread to the garage. Several fire fighters were trying to put out the fire, but I thought the water pressure wasn't very strong. The whole neighborhood pitched in and brough out whatever belongings were in the garage to save them from the fire.

I was pretty shaken by this incident. Fortunately, it wasn't our house, but I felt so bad for our neighbor. Just the night before, the old lady brought over some fresh vegetables from her garden. How very sad :( The whole house burned down and they couldn't get any belongings out from the house .. so pretty much everything was lost. Thankfully, nobody was physically injured.

We did learn from this incident that fire consumes quickly and completely. And that we can't really rely on the fire department -- we discovered that the fire hydrant is located in someplace not quite so accessible. We also realized that we really need to go out and buy a couple of fire extinguishers. Every household really should have a couple. Seriously.