The Fire.

About 2:30 a.m. Friday morning I started hearing weird sirens outside. There is a road behind our house that emergency vehicles drive down so I just assumed that they were going elsewhere. Then I started seeing the lights. I looked out the window and saw tons of lights two buildings down from us. We know someone who lives down there and I worried about the woman and that something might be wrong with her. I ran outside without any shoes on or anything and couldn't tell which townhouse they were at, so I ran back in, grabbed a sweatshirt, my keys, my phone, and put on some flip flops and started down the street. 


I got almost there before I started seeing smoke spilling out of windows on our side of the street. I was relieved that it wasn't our friend, but stayed out with some other neighbors watching as the firefighters entered a home and started breaking out windows with their hatchets. As I was coming out of our house they were hooking up their hose to the fire hydrant outside our place. I got there before they even started fighting the fire. 


I talked to some neighbors who told me they heard lots of pounding and that's what woke them up to begin with. There was a young guy in the unit adjoined to the burning one who smelled smoke and saw the fire. He called 911 and then started banging on the mans door as loud as he could. It took almost five minutes for the man to open the door and when he did he had no skin on parts of his head, hands, legs, and feet. He was bleeding, but insisted he was fine and didn't need to leave his house. He stayed in the doorway until the paramedics got there and took him out of the house.


After about an hour I decided I needed to come inside. My childhood asthma is triggered with smoke and I had inhaled if for too long. I had started to cough and was worried about the baby and being too close the whole time I was out there. I was only about 20 ft away from the unit the fire was in. After I came in I couldn't fall asleep. There were lights flashing outside our windows. About 4:30, 6-7 firefighters came and unhooked the hose and were talking, their radios were up loud going off, and they were banging the hose on the ground while rolling it back up. At about 5:30 I thought I could still hear trucks out there, but when I came down at 7 and the noise was still outside I looked and it was a news crew parked outside our house. 


The unit connected was unharmed. The woman and her son who live there are pretty traumatized by the event. I can't imagine when you are the ones who know there's a problem and working against the clock to try to save someone!


Little did I know that this fire would make national news or that we had a coach of an NFL team living close to us. When I saw his picture, I recognized his smile and realized that we went trick or treating at his house and he was giving out candy. He seemed very nice.


This is an article about it:http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=5&ved=0CEoQFjAE&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.usatoday.com%2Fsports%2Ffootball%2Fnfl%2Fsteelers%2Fstory%2F2012-01-06%2Fkirby-wilson-house-fire%2F52413994%2F1&ei=NdIIT72nF8TW0QGIvMi_Ag&usg=AFQjCNEm7-wPdQuz5J4QWkTkGawDO1KTxA&sig2=8zKNQAMsmCql9OK-4Dfn-Q


From reading nienie dialogues, I know with up to 50% of his body being burned he has a LONG way to go for recovery. It will be trying and painful. He will most likely have to have surgery after surgery. Hopefully they won't keep him in a coma for 6 months like nienie was. We will keep him in our prayers and hope for a good recovery. Luckily he has a big team pulling for him and to support him through this horrible tragedy.