Earlier this week as I drove home in the middle of the afternoon I could hear the sounds of fire engines, of ambulances, of police cars....I could see smoke rising in the sky and I wondered where it came from and said a little prayer for those involved. As I turned onto our street I could see those fire engines and other vehicles with flashing lights and they looked to be right in front of my house! My first thought was of Melissa Grant and her devastating fire just before Christmas last year...then I prayed, then I thought of my babies (I knew my hubby was not home) but Hannah and Ceasar were. As I got closer to the house I saw that although a fire engine sat in front of our house, another one sat in front of the house next door and the hoses from the two trucks led a one way path to the house next door. A HUGE sigh of relief came over me as I parked across the street from my house and could see that in no way was our house damaged...just the massive mess next door....my babies were barking...but more from the commotion than anything else. The neighbor wasn't home but Howard who had also just arrived home had Mike's cell phone number and after several calls we were able to reach him and get him home. The fire started in his kitchen...Mike had been home for lunch just two hours before and everything was fine. We suspect he probably grabbed a nuke-able food from his freezer and popped it in the microwave and left the box on a stove burner...the burner being gas ignited the box and the fire spread like wild-fire.
Mike has lost everything....literally everything in his house. Our garage connects with his front room, kitchen, bedroom. We are so fortunate there was a good 'fire wall' between the two townhouses. No damage whatsoever to our place except the smell of dead-smoke in our garage. We can live with that...it will go away eventually. Mike, in the meantime, has been relocated by his insurance company to a condo...3-4 months is the expected time to rebuild the inside of his townhouse. Fortunately he had no one else living with him, just him and his dog. And the dog was fine, he managed to get outside and a neighbor took him in when the fire engines showed up.
Moral of the story...
- give a neighbor your phone # or place of work, you never know when an emergency like this can happen to you.
- NEVER put cardboard containers on a stove top, even just for a couple minutes, you might forget you left it there and go away.
www.MaryW.com or www.MaryWarren.com
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