Fire Safety
I was about to head out to band practice when I heard very loud thunder. Soon after that I heard lots of fire trucks near my house. I didn't think anything of it until it kept going on for a few minutes. I stepped outside and saw all my neighbors walking to the interior of the neighborhood and three fire trucks coming in through the main road to the neighborhood.
As it turns out I believe that lightning struck one of the end units of a block of townhomes. There are usually four homes in a block. I saw pretty clearly a fire in the attic and I think the fire was so hot at one point that it looked like you could almost see the roof turn orange-hot. I could be seeing things though as our roofs are made of the tar-papery stuff that you see on most houses. I got kind of nervous initially. I saw the fire blaze through the roof and the wind picked up which made it worse. Even though it didn't happen to me, just seeing something like that in person is unsettling.
This fire was under control thankfully. I saw the firefighters hacking at the roof and walls of the house. I tried taking pictures with my cameraphone but like usual, it ate the pictures. I heard tere was damage on the back which I haven't seen yet. When I drove by earlier tonight all the lights were on and it appears that they were venting the house. That's a good sign. Hopefully the damage is as minimal as you can get for having an attic fire.
This kind of freaked me out today. The odds of this happening are slim but whenever I see lightning around here it looks like it probably strikes the ground somewhere within a half-mile radius of where I live. This could happen to me one day. Then I thought about what would happen if the same thing happened to my house. What if it burned down completely?
Then I realized that I would lose a lot of important things. A lot of them are replaceable but not without great effort. There are things that I would probably have an impossible time replacing like pictures stored on hard drives and other invaluable soft-copies of documents. Even though they're digital they're still stored somewhere physical within my house. I even have fire extinguishers in my house but I don't know where they are right now nor do I know how to use them!
So one of the first things I have to do is figure out Fires Safety 101 again from what, 4th grade? The second thing I need to do is have a contingency plan for all my valuables. I think this something everybody probably should do but doesn't get done until it's too late. I am definitely guilty of that.
As it turns out I believe that lightning struck one of the end units of a block of townhomes. There are usually four homes in a block. I saw pretty clearly a fire in the attic and I think the fire was so hot at one point that it looked like you could almost see the roof turn orange-hot. I could be seeing things though as our roofs are made of the tar-papery stuff that you see on most houses. I got kind of nervous initially. I saw the fire blaze through the roof and the wind picked up which made it worse. Even though it didn't happen to me, just seeing something like that in person is unsettling.
This fire was under control thankfully. I saw the firefighters hacking at the roof and walls of the house. I tried taking pictures with my cameraphone but like usual, it ate the pictures. I heard tere was damage on the back which I haven't seen yet. When I drove by earlier tonight all the lights were on and it appears that they were venting the house. That's a good sign. Hopefully the damage is as minimal as you can get for having an attic fire.
This kind of freaked me out today. The odds of this happening are slim but whenever I see lightning around here it looks like it probably strikes the ground somewhere within a half-mile radius of where I live. This could happen to me one day. Then I thought about what would happen if the same thing happened to my house. What if it burned down completely?
Then I realized that I would lose a lot of important things. A lot of them are replaceable but not without great effort. There are things that I would probably have an impossible time replacing like pictures stored on hard drives and other invaluable soft-copies of documents. Even though they're digital they're still stored somewhere physical within my house. I even have fire extinguishers in my house but I don't know where they are right now nor do I know how to use them!
So one of the first things I have to do is figure out Fires Safety 101 again from what, 4th grade? The second thing I need to do is have a contingency plan for all my valuables. I think this something everybody probably should do but doesn't get done until it's too late. I am definitely guilty of that.
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