Relative Something

There are two times when the topic of house fires gets a lot of attention in most people’s lives. One is during fire prevention events, and the other is when someone’s house burns. It’s not a comfortable topic for conversation. To those who have lost a home to fire, I suspect their lives get divided into “before” and “after” the fire.

In the early morning hours yesterday, one of Cyndie’s brothers woke to a smoke alarm going off, and he and his son were able to get out of the back door unharmed. They stood with neighbors and watched the conflagration for twenty minutes before the firefighters arrived.

One day, everything is fine, and then a day later, lives are in ashes. I’ve pondered this calamity many times in all the homes I have owned. What would I do if a fire were to break out?

Thankfully, I haven’t needed to find out.

This event has triggered a rash of fire memories for me. The most distant being a story my mother told of her mother’s night clothes erupting in flames from a space heater, I believe it was.

When my mom was in the WAVES during WWII and stationed in Miami, FL, there was a fire in her family home in Minneapolis that took the life of her father.

When I was a kid, a family that my parents knew lost everything to a house fire. I remember selecting some of my toy cars to contribute to a care package that my mom and dad were putting together in response. The thought of that family losing everything made a big impression on me.

In the Eden Prairie neighborhood where Cyndie and I raised our kids, there were four house fires on our street over the 25 years we were there. One across the street from ours burned two different times with different owners. The first incident occurred from a candle in an upstairs bedroom, and the second involved an electrical issue in a basement office filled with reams of paper.

Another house got hit by lightning, which caused a smoldering fire in the rafters.

The last fire in that neighborhood happened on a Saturday afternoon. Cyndie spotted the telltale smoke in the air and yelled to call 911 because there was a house on fire. The owner was standing in the driveway, dumbfounded. He told her there were propane tanks in the garage. Somehow, she moved his car out of the driveway. I stayed up on the street corner to wave emergency responders in the right direction.

I vividly remember the loud cracking and popping sound of a ferocious fire gaining energy by the second as I waited anxiously for too many minutes before the sound of the first fire engine siren came into range. It felt like an eternity, and it was excruciating.

Since this topic has arisen because another house has gone up in flames, why not use the occasion to review your home fire preparedness?

Today, we are extremely grateful that Cyndie’s brother and nephew are alright, and we are sending them love and well wishes for a speedy recovery from the devastating loss of their home and the dramatic disruption of their life routines.

Life, after the fire.

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