Grateful

My neighbor's house burnt down last night.



Right down.

I've been lucky in life so far to not be so close to a house fire. I've been near grass fires, and even helped fight one (I was pretty young, so I don't know I did much good, but I did whatever I was told to do). But this house went up fast. The flames were shooting up 30 m above the housetop within minutes and the fire had spread to the second house before the fire trucks even got here, and they were pretty quick.

We're three houses down from the original house and two from the one that the fire spread to, but when you look out my kitchen window, you realize how close the second house it to ours. If the next house had caught, ours would've gone because we're very close on that side to our neighbors house. But it didn't. They did have some water damage through an open window, and they say their house smells of smoke like ours does - we all had our windows open; it was 30 degrees yesterday - but the damage is minimal for them, and everyone is safe. I didn't talk to the other neighbors who were involved, but the policeman we spoke to said they were fine and had called family etc.

One of the boys in the original house was slightly burned and his father had a bad gush on his arm that we helped wrap up till he could get over to the paramedics, but no one was seriously hurt. Considering how fast that house went up, that could easily have not been the case.

We were in the middle of a thunderstorm when the fire broke out, (but the rain stopped just after that unfortunately!) Since there'd been a crash of thunder that seemed very close just before the fire broke out, I assumed the house had been hit by lightning. But the paper said two teens were messing around in the garage with matches and gasoline. That would explain why I saw the 13 year old being led away in tears by a policeman.

Because we were so close, we were evacuated from the house while the fire crews worked the fire.

I had always wondered why police showed up at a fire. Fire crews and paramedics I could understand, but I never really understood why the police showed up until yesterday. They come to manage people. They were the ones who told us to get out, and they went through our house to make sure everyone was out. (We figured that out when we returned and bedroom doors that hadn't been open earlier were standing open. Good thing we followed fire protocols and left the door unlocked so they could get in to check without breaking in.)

The police also commandeered a city bus for us to sit in while we waited, got water and food for evacuees if they needed it, and kept the crowds of onlookers back. And there were crowds! We of course evacuated out the front door, and we stood about ten houses away, behind the police cordon watching for a long time. When it looked like they had the fire under control in the front, we went around the back to see what the damage was like there.

It looked a carnival or something going on.

There's a major thoroughfare running behind our house and we back onto a large parkland area (yes, it's very nice). The place was covered in people. Covered. It looked like they were all there for a festival or something. There were people sitting on the hill watching, standing on the bike path, on the boulevard, across the street, and up the road. There were people everywhere. There were also cars everywhere. The entire boulevard was covered in cars that people had parked on the grass, stopping to watch, but even though some of them had pulled over, two full lanes of traffic going one way was at a standstill. As we watched, police had to come and clear all the vehicles out of the way and then cordon off the road to allow additional rescue vehicles through.

Three hours later, with the sun down and not much to see, I could still just make out groups of people sitting on that hill watching, I don't know what, since there wasn't much left to see.

Even this morning, the place is busy with onlookers, not just the fire crews finishing up their cleanup and inspection. And even though all the news crews were out last night - hubby was interviewed and made the evening news - they are all here again this morning. It's quite the show. I understand human curiosity, but it was still surprising to see how many people spent their entire evening watching someone else's tragedy unfold. I'm just glad it was only property that was damaged. That can be fixed. People can't.