I had plans to blog about our Christmas celebrations, New Year’s Celebrations and resolutions. Instead, right between Christmas and New Year’s our world was rocked and we have been in recovery mode ever since.
If you don’t follow me on Facebook or in real life – this will be new news. For the rest of you, my posts over the next few weeks will be an account of what exactly happened four weeks ago and where we are now.
Wednesday December 29, 2010
5:00 am My alarm went off but I was too tired to work out. Reset for 6:00.
5:18 am Windsor jumped up on the bed and needed to go out
5:19 am Hanging out on the deck while Windsor pee’s. I noticed that it was really cold and that Madison had left toys in the yard the night before. I thought to myself “we have more snow coming, Madison better get those picked up tonight.”
5:20 am Back to bed
5:25 am Windsor had to go out again **GROAN** I should have just got up and got on the dang treadmill!
5:27 am Back to bed
5:27-5:40 Windsor is wildly chewing on a bone and keeping me awake. Seriously! I just wanted another hour of sleep!
5:40 am Take Windsor to his kennel and lock him up, without his bone. Look out the patio door again, everything seems just fine.
Quite honestly, the only unusual thing about this morning is that Windsor had to go out at 5:18 and again just a few minutes later. He can normally make it to 6:30 or 7:00 before he needs to go out at all. Aside from this, he did not act strange or alert us in any way that something was wrong. I’m not sure if this makes him a stupid dog or if things just happened that quickly!
6:12 am Rollover and groan – I really MUST get up for work! Just a few more minutes…
6:12 plus a few more seconds: Frantic pounding on our front door.
Mike bolts out of bed and shouts “Someone is trying to get in the house!”
We run to the living room and look out the window. There is a woman on the sidewalk on a cell phone. She is jumping up and down and waving to us through the window. There are two more people on our front step and still pounding on the door.
Mike shouts “Just a minute!” as he starts down the stairs to the door. I throw a bathrobe at him. I’m pretty sure he had his oldest and most holey boxers on.
Mike opens the door to a bald guy with a long goatee. He looked like he just stepped out of a biker bar.
“Dude,” he says. “Your garage is on fire! We have already called the fire department.”
“WHAT???” We both say.
He says it again. “Your garage is on fire.”
I run to the patio and see thick black smoke billowing out of creases in the garage door.
My exact words were “Holy Shit, he’s right!”
I fumbled around for my cell phone (not really sure why!), grabbed a sweatshirt and threw on boots and was outside within a minute’s time. By the time I got out there, the entire garage was completely engulfed in flames.
I remember saying “what is taking so long, why aren’t they here yet???”
I could hear sirens.
I knew that we couldn’t save anything and that it was too risky to even try. I just stood there in the driveway watching it burn.
A lady that lives on the street behind us flagged the police and fire trucks down our street. She offered me a warm place to stay if we needed it.
The firemen arrive and run hoses from a tanker truck and get them on the garage. Three more trucks arrive and I point a fireman in the direction of the nearest fire hydrant. Thank Goodness our new neighbor had plowed the snow away from it!
My neighbor, Jess, from across the street put on her coat and stood with me while we watched it burn. I didn’t know what to say to her. I asked her if she had a booster seat we could borrow for Madison, since our’s was burning. I’m not sure what car I thought I was going to put it in.
A fireman asked me if there were vehicles in the garage. I say “Yes, an SUV and a full sized truck and both have full gas tanks!”
I remember thinking “Crap, that’s like 60 gallons of gas in those trucks at $3.00 a gallon!”
The fire fighters quickly realized that they could not save the garage. They quickly moved into protection mode – they started getting water on our next door neighbor’s shed and on the house that is behind us. A firefighter asked for a shovel to clear snow from a fence gate so he could get stuff out of the neighbor’s shed before it burned. I laughed and told him the shovel was in the garage.
I notice a nicely dressed man on the sidewalk taking a flip video. Probably the press, I thought. Sure enough, video and copy were on the Rochester Post Bulletin’s website before the fire was even put out. The local news station, KTTC, arrived and started taking video as well.
At some point, after standing outside for a long time in my jammies and sweatshirt, I realized I was cold. I ran in to get a coat and my camera. I took pictures of the garage as it burned.
Some of them would be cool if it weren’t our garage. Our trucks. Our belongings. Our sense of security.
We called family. Mike’s parents came over and were there to watch it burn too. Mike mostly stayed inside. The firemen told him to get the kids ready to evacuate the house, in case the fire spread. I looked up and saw Madison in the driveway, watching the garage burn. I didn’t know how she got out there. I didn’t want her to see it. Cameron was more interested in the fire trucks and never saw the fire.
The firemen realized the roof was going to collapse and had to retreat for a bit. At one point I saw them use a long tool to pull the garage door down. The blackened garage door is still sitting in the snow in our backyard.
My Mom and Dad felt helpless all the way in Cushing. They didn’t know if they should come down or what.
I texted Jodi and said “the day isn’t starting out too great, our garage is burning down.”
Jodi called and was in disbelief. I cried as I told her it was true.
Through the closed patio door in the dining room, you could feel the intense heat of the fire, even as the flames were subsiding. We are shocked that the siding on the back of the house didn’t melt.
It took about an hour to get the fire put out. Mike’s truck burned for hours afterwards. The firemen had to stay and keep water on it until it burned itself out. KTTC interviewed one of the firemen. They totally staged the placement of the trucks for the interview. I remember thinking that was really funny.
To be continued.....
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