Yesterday’s fire

Yesterday afternoon I wandered upstairs to say “Hi” to my niece, who had just returned home from kindergarden. She greeted me with the news that there was a house fire. A fire? Our house? What house?

She pulled me to the window and there was black smoke and flames coming from the house behind ours! My first reaction was to make sure I knew where the other kids were. Were they with Emily? Where was Emily? Was Thea still upstairs still taking her nap?

The yards are large, so the fire wasn’t immediately threatening our house. But it was clearly our immediate neighbor behind us, and the fire was obviously very hot, with huge amounts of black billowing smoke. I could see the flames (or perhaps I was seeing them reflected the other neighbor’s windows, I’m not sure). All I know is they were huge flames, about 10-14 feet high.

Almost immediately the smoke went from black to white, and then it was all over. The firetrucks had gotten there extremely fast. Sorry I didn’t take any pictures until it was all over; I was too busy making sure we had all the kids accounted for.

The neighbor’s house is just to the right of the blue house, hidden behind Emily’s garage. Smoke had been billowing as high as the trees:

Emily is friends with her neighbor and got the terrifying story of what had happened. It wasn’t a house fire, it was her car.

Emily’s neighbor had just pulled into her driveway. When she turned off the car she saw smoke coming out of the hood. She had two little kids in carseats in the back. She got her first child out, and then for several horrifying seconds couldn’t get her second child’s carseat unbuckled. The buckle was stuck, and she struggled with it frantically. Thank God she was able to get both kids out of the car before the flames erupted. I can’t think of anything more frightening.

Everyone is fine. But her nice, newer Toyota RAV4 looks like it was bombed.