The people behind us here in Texas had a house fire the other night. I woke up at 3:30 probably to the sound of fire sirens, but I don’t recall hearing anything. I saw my neighbors out at that hour – kids and adults – but they were calling their dog and I thought perhaps the dog had escaped from their house and they were all simply on an early morning hunt.
I saw red and blue lights swirling round down past our back field, but I didn’t smell smoke. I got it in my head that the city was repairing the street and that repair had awakened the family and that was why they were up. I went back to bed thinking that it was awfully late for them to be looking for their dog. I figured they would all be tired in the morning.
The next day, I saw them sitting in a circle near our driveway with Red Cross volunteers. It was then I knew my assumptions had been wrong.
Their electricity had gone out because of a wind storm several days before. The landlord had come over to fix it, but it was too late to call the electric company. The family had a kerosene heater burning in the kids’ room. The cat knocked it over in the night. The house went up in flames quickly. Luckily, the parents were sleeping in the room nearest the back door, and the children were out in a tent in the field because it was hot in the house. The man in the duplex next to theirs smelled smoke, ran over and knocked down the back door, then helped the couple out. One dog and a kitten ran out; a second dog was not so lucky and died of smoke inhalation.
I talked yesterday to the man who lived in the other side of the duplex. His face was still covered in soot and he was dressed only in overall and shoes, no shirt. He told me how he used to run a thriving airplane restoration service until 9/11. Then the airport where he restored planes was closed for 11 months. His business dried up and he has not recovered since.
I said, “Sounds like you’ve had a run of bad luck.”
He said, “The past few years have been bad, the past couple of months have been worse, and last night was the worst of all, but hey, it can’t go anywhere else but up from here, right?”
“Good attitude,” I said.
How many of us could take that attitude? I’d be walking around in shock for days. Of course, he may be feeling more of the loss today then yesterday. He admitted he was running on pure adrenaline.
The Red Cross took the family and the man to a motel. I wondered how long they would be allowed to stay there. In the meantime, the roof and walls of the duplex are burned completely and a pile of charred clothes are spewing out of the window where the kerosene lamp was. If the kids had been in that room, they would all be dead now.
Ironically, the man in the other side of the duplex brought the couple the kerosene lantern to replace the candles they were using for light. “This is much safer,” he said.
And it would have been if that cat hadn’t knocked over the lantern in the middle of the night.
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