So imagine you're asleep. Your little family is all all cozy in bed. You hear your husband's alarm clock go off for work and as he turns it off and lays back down you hear the gentle sound of raindrops hitting the window. "Mmmm. It's gonna be a cozy rainy day in bed" You think to yourself. Your husband begins to rise for work and looks out the window to see how bad the rain is and you pull the covers tighter and start to drift back into sleep when you hear your husband gasp..."Oh my God the Condo is on fire!"
That is how our day started today. That lovely "rain hitting the window" sound was actually the horrifying crackle of flames 20 feet away from where we sleep. I jumped out of bed and grabbed my babies thinking that our actual condo was on fire. I ran to the sliding glass window and this is what I see:
Except when I saw it, there was not a firetruck, or ambulance in sight. Just this raging fire that nobody seemed to know about at 8am.
I see the flames are jumping from the porch to the grass and i'm thinking, it's going to spread. We scurry around for articles of clothing, the laptop and camera. Coen see's the fire from the window and is pointing at it and saying "Oh no, biyah!"
Mike is loading the kids into the car when I hear this "Kaboom"....a propane tank on the deck has exploded. That's when I snapped this picture. I ran to all of my immediate neighbors and knocked on all of their doors. I'm sure I terrified the woman across the hall. She wandered sleepily into the hall wondering why I was banging on her door to see this red-eyed, Chaka Khan-haired woman running around saying "There's a fire!"
I finally get out...with no shoes, Coen with no pants and we get in the car and drive down the street. The mother in me just wanted to flee....the journalist in me wanted to go back and watch what was happening. We watched as 3 fire trucks pulled in and neighbors ran out to watch the blaze. I kept running back, praying it hadn't spread to the other condos. Luckily it hadn't and the fire was under control. It did take them about 45 minutes to get it out though.
Terrifying and yet...kind of exciting. Sure got a start to our day.
Turns out nobody was hurt, thank Goodness. I just keep thinking, What if Mike never looked out the window and it had spread? We would've slept right through that. Definitely counting our blessings. I can't imagine being the occupant or even the people across the hall. They were all affected and have severe damage/loss of their home.
This is the second fire here. The ones directly across from our building burned about 10 years ago....Time to move! LOL
The cause of the fire....
One of these...
On a wooden deck though? No bueno....
The whole incident was in the local newspaper which you can read here:
http://www.standard.net/stories/2014/03/26/roof-collapses-roy-apartment-fire-building-evacuated
and you may recognize one of the photo contributors....
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