Tag Archives: house fire

I Remember the Smoke: The Rest of the Story

30 Jan

What happened a few months before the fire:  My mother had a recurring nightmare about thieves breaking into the house.  So she pestered my dad until he installed a new door knob on the front door, one that locked.  Once the door knob was installed, she was happy, and went about life as usual, never bothering to lock the door.

What happened the day of the fire:  My mother left 4 of us at Grandma’s house (ages 5, 4, 3, & 2) while she went grocery shopping with the baby (6 months old).  She returned to the house from shopping, intending to put the sleeping baby in his crib before coming to get the rest of us from Grandma.  But the front door was locked.   Rather than walk ALL the way around to the back door, she decided to just take the baby with her.

My father was laying a Formica counter in the new addition to the house.  The glue that is used to glue down ( lay) Formica is very flammable.  The fumes are also extremely flammable.  Dad had gone upstairs to put his tools away and as he reached to set the glue can on the shelf, his overall strap caught on a nail.  He missed the shelf and the can dropped.  When the can hit the floor, it caused a spark that ignited the fumes in the house and the house basically erupted in flames.  The force of the fire pushed Dad down the stairs and out the back door in 2 giant steps.  He ran around to the side of the house, broke a window, and pulled out the file cabinet drawer I mentioned before.  He also grabbed a box of baby clothes (which it turned out my mom had boxed up because the baby had outgrown them.)  If the baby had been in the house, my dad would most likely not been able to save him, and probably would have died trying.

This is the boy who lived because one day in the whole of my parents’ life, someone locked a door:

Peter___Matt1983
(he’s the one wearing the shirt)

Here are the rest of us who are also all glad that we weren’t home that day:

RAMP_01

If you click on the picture, you can see it bigger.

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I Remember Smoke

30 Jan

When I was 5, our house caught fire.  My siblings and I were at our grandmother’s house.  My mom was grocery shopping.  My dad was working on remodeling the kitchen of the 100 year old farmhouse we lived in.  After shopping, Mom picked us up from grandma’s.  It was October, and there were lots of leaves on the ground.

What I remember seeing is the smoke.  When we were about 2 miles from home, we could see it–a big black column billowing up above the trees with orange tongues of flame flickering out here and there.

What I remember hearing is my mother saying, “Someone must be burning tires……….No! that’s a house!……………It’s our house!”

When we reached our neighbor’s house (about a quarter mile away from our place), their daughter ran out and shouted for us to stop, her hair whipping in the wind.  We stayed there and waited and watched the red and yellow lights flashing on the firetrucks.

My sister who was a year younger than I, cried that she wanted to sleep in her own bed.  I being so much older and wiser thought to myself how silly she was to want her bed when it was burning up.  Personally, I hoped my dolly that said, “Momma” had been saved from the fire.

It never occurred to me to wonder if my dad was safe (he was.)  I imagined him helping the firemen and climbing up their tall ladders.

The house burned quickly–too fast for the firemen to save anything.  My dad did have time to pull out the file cabinet drawer with all the important papers.

 

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