A Little Piece of Heaven: Just a bit toasty

Well, I don't feel like posting a big thingy here (edit-oops, too late, I ended up posting a lot), but I wanted to mention what has been happening in our household for the past week and a half. We have had a fire in our house. Fortunately, the structure itself is alright. But the downstairs is shot, and the upstairs is full of smoke and soot damage. The entire house contents are going to have to come out, most of it is unsalvagable, and all of the walls, ceilings and carpet/linoleum etc. is going to have to be taken out. The house has the most awful smell I've ever smelled. The closest thing I can compare it to, is when you burn plastic. But it's so much worse, like a rancid chemically nasty plactic burn smell that gets in your nostrils and won't go away. It's soaked into every possible thing in the house that is permeable. So, everything's going down to the bare bones, and then we have to build it back up. Fortunately, we have good insurance and that will be a big help. But our family is in a hotel right now, and hopefully will get to a rental soon. It will probably be a minimum of a half a year before we can live there again (but hey, it took us a year to remodal our bathroom, so I don't have a lot of faith in the system!). Very stressfull on the fam.

I had been planning on getting some plants and stuff this spring, and working on our property in preparation for my husband and I having our renewal of vows on the property next summer (15 years!). I don't see all that preparation happening now. I'm hoping that our plants hold up to the neglect and/or trampeling from work crews. :-( I'm praying that everything will work out in the end. Hopefully, despite the sad state of the yard, our renewals can be a time of reflection, gratefullness to God's mercy and hope for the future.

This happened right at the anniversary of our finding this property 10 years ago, which is ironic. Sad on one hand, but on the other hand, it makes you reavaluate and count your blessings when you go through an ordeal like this.

Several things happened the day of the fire, that were miracles from God:

My husband was out by the road when the fire started, and our great (loud!) heat alarm in the basement alerted him to the fire.

I was taking a nap, with ear plugs in, and never woke up to the alarms, even when the smoke alarm in my bedroom went off with the smoke pouring into my room. My husband came into the bedroom and got me out the window. It took me a long while to fully wake up and realize what was happening. I'm wondering if the smoke inhalation and lack of oxygen was already getting to me (?). Later, I found several big bruises on my inner knees and lower calves, from where I went out the window. I don't remember it being that energetic at the time. :-p

Our area is serviced by a volunteer fire station. This means that it is not manned, but that volunteers keep an ear out to fires with their radios, and have to come in from their homes (they live near the station), work or wherever they are if they're close enough. Then they have to get the engines out and respond. Fire engines also come in from the manned stations in town, which are about 10-15 minutes away (volunteer station is about 2-3 minutes away). The day of the fire, they were doing a work bee at the station. I'm sure they do work bees there at other times, but in the 10 years I've lived at this house, I've never seen one done before. They had maybe 10-15 (it's hard to count, I just remember tons of them going in and out of our house with their SCBA's on - great training for them!) strapping young men there working, with some extra engines. What wonderful timing God has.

Our indoor kitty, Angel, happened to be in my bedroom, so we were able to grab her and put her in our truck. She was so upset and confused by everything. She's now at my MIL's apartment, next to our house.

My husband (who is an ex-fire fighter), said that the fire in our downstairs living room looks like it was just moments away from a flashover. I believe, that without our excellent alarm system (my husband has a business selling these USA made quality alarms), and the extra fire fighters at the end of the road, I wouldn't be alive now, and our house would have been burned much more than the smallish portion that it ended up being burned in the end.

My dad is a volunteer firefighter, EMT and first responder for our area. My poor parents found out about our fire from the scanner. My mom is always worried about us, when she hears about accidents on our road, she'll call us and make sure that we're safe. I'm sure that hearing about our fire like that was her worst fears realized!

This is a difficult time for our family, and all the prayers and support from family and friends is wonderful. In the end, God provides, and reminds us of what is truly important.

I'll post more pictures here when I'm up to it. I'll try and keep up with updates on the house, throughout our renovations.

This was the first truck to arrive. You can see the haziness in the air, from the smoke:

A couple ambulances, park up on the road for room. The paramedic walked down and checked us out while I was sitting in our Suburban. Picture is a bit darker in the upper left hand corner, because I'm taking it through the windshield, although there was a storm skirting around the edge (never hit us):

A Wenatchee World newspaper reporter up on the road looking down at us. I guess that he decided that our house fire was too boring, because he didn't seem to take (nor post) any pictures:

Angel, on the dash of our truck. She was trying to get as close to us as possible, and was quite distraught, and meowing. If we got close, she'd act like we were petting her, although it was only the glass. You can see the firefighters in the background, and the firetruck reflected in the windshield:

Firefighters going into the house. You can see his mask and SCBA tank:

After everything was contained, there was a lot of congragating outside of the front door. About 2/3rds of the firefighters are standing in this group, waiting to make sure there aren't any hotspots left. My dad is on the farthest left, in the darker yellow (he's wearing his brush suit):

Wrapping up:

My sweet son wanted to get in the truck with Angel, to comfort her. For a while, I kept saying no, because I was afraid that as soon as we opened the door she would bolt, with all the confusion and fear. Here he is, giving me puppy dog eyes (is she giving me kitty eyes?):