where'd my world go *_*

[rubah]

my dad, kishi and I were up late last night playing an old game called Oil Baron. We were in good spirits, towards the end of the game (I was totally winning) when the rain storm that had been going on all night decided to become a thunderstorm. We heard a loud pop, but didn't think too much about it, since we get a lot of popping sounds during thunderstorms. Ten or fifteen minutes later, I ask my dad what kind of gum he's chewing, because it smells berrylike and smoky all at once. He satisfies me on the berry count, but I realize that gum shouldn't smell smoky at all. Kishi confirms the scent, so we set off to find the source of the smoke. Nothing is visible inside or out, but smoke is pouring out of the attic when dad looks up there.

He goes outside and opens a crawlway under the house and sees an orange glow. He tries to get it with the waterhose, but it doesn't reach. Inside, he instructs me to call 911, and we start to gather whatever we can think of. When he opens a closet in the hallway, billows of smoke just pour out. My mom wakes up at this point.

We grab three laptops (but forgot mom's), everyone's cell phones, and get lola in her cage. The boxes we brought in from the car when we got home that evening are taken back out. The smoke gets thicker and thicker. It seems like the fire department is taking forever to get out to our house. I try to think calmly and slowly, and take the time to close the pathetic plastic sheets that serve as doors to my bathroom and bedroom. I do not close the only door to my bedroom that is worth anything.

I make sure mussie, reita, and young cato all get outside, and think that I should shut the pet door, because reita is scared of storms and probably will try to run inside at all costs, but I don't know how. I do not shut the door to the cat room, where the pet door leads to.

The first responder shows up-- it's a policeman from Pottsville. It has been pouring rain all this time. I move my car away from the house, but walk back because i can't stand not knowing what's happening. They verify that everyone is out of the house, and we wait for the engine to arrive. When it gets there, the flashing lights illuminate our sun porch my dad enclosed. It is translucent, a roiling vat of hot smokes. I took some video with my phone. You can see the orange glow in the kitchen about where the piano is. As the volunteers are suited and respiratored up, the hoses are rolled out, flat, then are round when pressure is applied. The orange glow disappears, but smoke still pours out. It is still raining hard. The ground outside is soaked, and kishi only has his jacket and is shivering, determined to stay with me. I have a jacket and a houserobe on, and don't notice anything.

There's nothing now to see, and I feel I would only be in the way, so we move lola to my parents' vehicle, and climb in the backseat, where the heater is on, and we can begin to dry out.

It's four hours, all told, by the time the last truck leaves. They say it was electrical, and started right where dad thought he saw it. We go inside to salvage what we can for the night. The whole place smells acrid. Even covering your nose with a sleeve doesn't work for long, and my eyes burn. Everything is dark, because the electricity and gas have both been shut off. We work with a "snake light", as my dad calls it, and two LED flashlights that are wonderfully bright.

The first room, the cat room, is mostly intact, except that all the ceiling tiles have melted down the walls and onto the floor. All my artwork that hung on the walls is unsinged, although the glass on the framed pictures has broken. The light fixtures on the ceiling fan are completely black, as though my sister were living in that room again and had spray painted.

The next room is the dining room. The curtains have fallen down, and black remnants are bunched up on the curtain rods. The curtains in the floor look okay, but I don't look too closely. The table and chairs seem fine, but mom's plant is covered in soot (I don't believe it was burned, but it might have gotten too hot regardless). The glass doors to the china cabinet have broken out, but none of the china has broken, nor have any of the glass vases or shot glasses on the wall above it.

Behind us, the den looks fine, just sooty.

The kitchen is in shambles. Every single appliance is warped, twisted, melted. The refrigerator is crusty black, and it takes a lot of force to get into it. The box of Thin Mints kishi brought with him that was in the freezer is scorched on one side, and it smells so bad my dad can't sleep with it in the motel room. (The cookies themselves are okay The smell is scorched, carbon, chemical, plastic. My mom's diet coke bottles she has been using for years that were in the freezer have warped from the heat. The lid to the piano is blackened, but it looks structurally sound. Some of the ceiling tiles have fallen, and all of the light fixtures. Insulation lies in piles. The cabinets are basically charcoal, but almost everything inside is fine. My mother's medicines have all fused together. The tops are molten, and when you shake them, there is no sound. The things she had in the cabinet, extra refills are fine, but she has a lot of prescriptions and not many refills on hand. I grab one of them and a bottle of aspirin for her.

The living room looks largely okay, but as we get deeper into the house, the fumes get stronger. All the light shades are fabric skeletons, a large picture that hung over the couch has fallen off the wall, but fortunately, landed on the couch. I don't know what condition the couches are in, but they were leather, so may have fared better than the shades.

My room looks fine, just sooty. The door that I carefully shut is bent over on the floor. I didn't look in my bathroom.

The paint is all gone in the hallway, and some of the plaster. You can see the old boards in the wall that I haven't seen except in old pictures of when we first moved in. The wall phone and thermostat are gone. There are tatters of books on the metal shelf, and a drapelet of five wires. Foolishly, I think to myself "now, what on that shelf would've been wired?" (the router and modem). A bible study book is missing its first half, and I see a chapter from Philemon. The floor is muddy puddles of ash and half burnt wood.

The laundry room is heartbreaking. My parents just bought their brand new high-efficiency washer and dryer. Their fronts are melted; the doors are hard to open. My laundry left in the dryer is intact, but slightly blackened. One chair looks ready to collapse--the other was thrown outside by the firemen. Mom looks ready to cry because she thinks her bible was burned up, but I pick it up and show her it's just got some ash on the sides. It was still in the bible case I got her for Christmas two years ago.

The cupboard above the washer and dryer used to have a picture of the Grand Tetons painted onto it. It has peeled away, carbon paper. Inside, the bottle of fabric softener has a hole burned into it. Everything else is brown and scorched.

The bird clock has fallen off the wall, the back of it fused hideously. A collage I made in 7th grade looks particularly crispy, and above it, a print of the angel leading two kids across a bridge with a missing plank is dark.

My parents' bedroom is largely fine. Their new dresser just has a thick layer of dismal over it. I run my finger down it, and see the excited cherry wood underneath. Their water bed is still full, hasn't leaked. The little tv they were going to put into their RV looks okay from the front, but the back is twisted. My dad's clothes are fine, but they stink. I picked him out some jeans and a shirt, but he can't wear them today, and they smelled up the load of laundry I did at Janie's Qwik Wash. My mom's clothes are brown.

There's not much left to the bathroom.

The staircase to the attic, always rickety, is black, and even I'm afraid to test its strength.

All the animals did get outside, but Reita, more afraid of the storm than the smoke detector, must have gotten back inside when we weren't watching. She died in my bedroom, probably of asphyxiation. The firefighters laid her on the back patio, out of the rain. Young Cato ran off, probably to the barn, where he'll fend according to his own devices. We had to leave mussie at the house with some food. Our insurance company sent a photographer over today, and he called. Mom told him "just go in, it's open" but he said "well, there's a dog in here barking at me!"

mutty

this motel has a "Strict NO CAT policy", but lola's being good. After I got back from running errands all day today, she sat next to me and just stared up at me like she liked me or something. I wonder what it's like from her perspective. I don't know that she ever found out anything was wrong. We just put her in her cage, took her outside, and she was cooped up most of the night.

I had a dentist appointment this morning, which I don't think anyone would've blamed me for missing, but I thought I should take the opportunity to get some toothpaste and a toothbrush. Kishi is the only one that had a toiletry bag, the one he brought with him; I was going to rely on my duplicates at the house, and mom and dad had no time to grab any. My dentist smiles and is happy to give me three brushes. I don't tell her why. Any time someone asks me how I am, I say carefully "I am okay." I personally am not injured or hurt. My world has collapsed somewhat, but that's not fair for me to put that burden on you-- you're just my dentist, after all.

We got in touch with the red cross, and they gave us a card to get food, clothes, gas with. My friend Megan called me at 9AM making sure I knew what had happened (she thought I might still be at my apartment). One of her friend's husband was one of the volunteers last night. Mom and dad say most of our relatives, even my recently estranged brother, have gotten in contact with them, even so early.

I know it's not rational to blame myself for Reita dying. Like my dad inelegantly put it, it was kind of a blessing in disguise. She was 14 years old-- old for a big dog, going blind, deaf, teeth no good for eating hard food anymore. I spent a lot of time last night petting her to calm her from the storm. I just wish I would've learned how to lock the dog door before now.

and I wonder what would've happened if Kishi and I hadn't come home for mother's day, for that dentist appointment. If mom and dad had gone to bed, and hadn't woken up until mom woke up. By that point, it might've been dangerous for them to leave their bedroom-- the starting point was right between the two exits to their room. Dad says they would've gone out the window, but I wonder. And what if we hadn't been awake, alert? I had intended on going to bed early for my appointment. Thank god for Oil Baron. thank eris for volunteers. and praise allah for our family and friends.

But I keep hearing the sound of firetrucks.

That was Monday morning. Obv now it's thursday evening. We've buried Beato, inventoried the house, made arrangements for a dumpster to start throwing stuff out.

It's incredible to enumerate all your possessions, and exhausting to price them all.
man, though, I was the luckiest of the three of us. living away from home, so mostly old stuff was at the house, my room was the furthest away, so the least damaged, etc.

took lola with us up to the house the last two days, and her white feet are just black now. She's completely grey instead of mostly grey :D she accidentally jumped into the bathtub when I was cleaning up though, and uh, she didn't like that :p

Comments

[jiro4.livejournal.com]

When my house got caught in the "Bushfires of '95" I was only three, so I have no recollection of how incredibly agonising this whole process must be for you all.

I guess I can only say that things do get back to normal, or thereabouts, eventually. Again, I'm sorry to hear about Reita.

[lilredsarah.livejournal.com]

ohhh, allie, my dear. I can't even imagine.

I do hope you're okay. I'm here to talk to if you need you. You can text me or something - just message me.

[apri.livejournal.com]

*HUGS*

[trebekah.livejournal.com]

:( I'm so sorry. *hugs*

[pikestaff.livejournal.com]

Wow, it's really terrible to hear all of that. But I'm glad you're okay D:

[mystickeeper.livejournal.com]

Holy shit, :(

I'm so sorry that this happened.

[yar-yars.livejournal.com]

Ya you wouldn't realize how many things people own until you have to empty their house after a fire.

And then cleaning everything.

One-by-one.

:S

[http://users.livejournal.com/_gloryoflove/]

glad you and your family is safe, and sorry about the loss of your pet. that is crazy though. i remember in 5th grade my next door neighbors house burnt down. i was at school at the time, but they had a firetruck in my backyard to fight it, and our windows cracked from the heat. i remember walking through their house after, it was kind of scary looking.