Fire in the House Next Door!

Deadpan

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What a way to start the morning, someone beating on my door saying the house next to us is on fire. Fire station is only a mile away but the house is a total loss and we didn't escape undamaged.

Time for another insurance claim!

And time for some guitar!
 
About 15 years ago, I lived in a very wooded neighborhood… Had about an acre of land which was half forested. That property backed up to a small road.

One morning I was making coffee in my pajamas and saw a ton of smoke pouring up from the back. Grab my cameras and a pair of house slippers, running through the back 40 crossing the road going through some neighbors side yard.

Someone saw me and said hey, what’s up?
I pointed to the huge flames, reaching into the sky immediately behind their home. They thought I was some kind of journalist because of the cameras.

It was quite tragic. In the end found out it was a large immigrant family lived there clustered up, maybe 15 people. One of them was the guy that checked out my groceries once a week.

No joke.
 
Wow! Of the fire call videos I've watched, they seem to not have much of a clue as to how the size up the situation immediately upon arrival, and get things in action quickly. I'd say only 1 in 5 actually looked like they knew what they were doing. One video I saw literally took them 10 minutes to put "wet stuff on the red stuff." It was painful to watch.

NOT trying to put firemen down, but when seconds count, and could mean the difference between keeping adjacent houses from being involved, it's imperative they need to have a plan already rehearsed, and hit the ground running.

Of that 1 well-oiled crew I saw, they had a man up on top of the truck manning the deck gun, while the driver got out and went right to the pump controls, and had the fire under control in less than a minute! With only the on-board water supply.

And I get that saving a house that's already involved in a working fire is pretty much fruitless, since even the non-burnt areas are a loss, due to the smoke damage, protecting that fire from other structures seemed to be the problem areas in their plan-of-attack.

With my experience in running large carpentry crews efficiently, watching those videos literally made me call my local department to inquire about volunteering, but I was told I was too old.

Glad you're ok!
 
That’s a feeling I got used to back in the 90’s, we had an arsonist lighting fires in my neighborhood, I want to say he burned down 3-4 apartment buildings but the little f*cker got caught when he set our garage on fire. Pretty sure the neighborhood got a piece of him before the cops showed up.

Thankfully it was winter when that was going on because if it were summer, the amount of debris/embers flying off those buildings would absolutely have lit up all the leaves/dry wood in the alleys around the buildings where slumlords never cleaned. The heat coming off those fires was something else, man. You could stand 100 feet away and feel it just fine.

There was one in my apartment complex about 8 years ago, the building next to us. I always wondered what it would look like for a cement building to go up in flames like that, I got my answer and it was really heartbreaking. The whole building had to be evacuated even though a portion of it was unaffected, they still hosed the apartments down to prevent the fire from spreading. Every apartment door/window/porch had caution tape on it for about 10 months, everyone’s belongings were right there in the open and people were walking in at night time and taking what they wanted while the tenants would show up in the day, begging to go in to see whatever they could salvage and being turned away. They left with the clothes on their backs and were unable to retrieve anything after that day.

Seems my hometown has had a continuous issue with arsonists. I was looking to see if I could find an article from the 90’s when it first started happening and the turd set our garage on fire, but just came across a bunch more that have occurred since. 3 teens killed someone up there setting buildings on fire. :cautious:
 
Glad you are all ok. That is no way to start the day.

We had an 6 year old girl pass in an house fire this past winter in our town here. It was
the house right next door to the Fire Station. But being an all volunteer department there
was no one at the Station when it was burning. So sad.

Can see it in local news footage. I get a lump in my throat every time I drive by. :(


 
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