Again, most of the evening after the fire is a blur. I am trying to remember bits and pieces but I just cant seem to.
its like the game boggle. You shake things up and put it down and try to make sense out of the jumbles. I only come up with 3 letter words, never more. Same thing here..I can remember small pieces, but never more.
Did I mention that the bird survived? The firemen brought him out. He was bouncing around the bottom of the cage for a minute or two but perked right up. He was hanging downstairs in the family room. If he had been in the boys room he would have died. C1 was thrilled!
I did find out later that hubby asked BGJr, I went to college with him, to look for C2's cat. That if the cat did not survive they were not to bring him out. BGJr took two men with him and headed in. C2 was sitting on the sidewalk crying, asking about her cat. I had told her, I think, that cats are very very good at hiding and surviving. After a bit, the bring the cat out. He was hiding behind my bed. I figured that out the next ?day? when it was light out and we went inside...my bed was pulled out and in the center of the room. It took me a minute, but I realized why. He's ok. They put him in hubbies car. We didn't know what else to do with him.
G's take the other two kids as the oldest has already left. Fire man takes hubby and me into the house. Most of the neighbors have gone back home as some of the fire trucks have left and there is no more true excitement.
Hubby and I go inside. I'm not sure there are really words to describe what we see. Besides the obvious darkness as by now the power has been shut off, the air is thick with smoke and this god awful stench. Its hot, humid, dark, dank....i'm not sure there are enough descriptive words to explain it. We start to go upstairs and I stop. The firemen are still putting out hot spots in the garage and it is now raining on my dining room table. (un salvageable) I did find it rather odd that it was raining inside my house. Slightly comical. Hubby stops and comes back down and I pointed it out to him, look, its raining in the dining room!
Now, this is all I remember of the tour of the house. We go upstairs and I think, Thank you mother nature, I need to grab my box. I enter the bathroom and go to grab them, and fireman says, NO! You can take nothing out of here. Its not safe. I think...oh crap...I turn to leave the bathroom and grab my contacts. I turn to him and say, these I am taking. I must have had a look on my face as he didn't say another word.
Honestly, that is all I remember about the house tour.
We are now back outside..Oh...did I mention I was grilled by about 4 different firemen! Each asking about the fire pit or did I have candles burning. Oh...So I'm in the backyard, I dont know if its before or after the tour of the house, and I look at the fire pit where sitting on the edge is a melted bottle of something and its smoking..I turn to fireman and say, what is ....then I grabbed his arm and say something like OMG! He turns and says , 'what what! I tell him that the smoking bottle is muratic acid, then I remembered...theres a glass bottle of sulfuric acid in the garage...by where the fire was eating everything. Fireman takes off towards the garage.
Why did we have a bottle of sulfuric acid in the garage you are wondering.....When we cleaned out His Dad's place a couple of weeks earlier, this was in the basement. We didn't know what to do with it, so we brought it to our place and put it in our garage until we could ask , wait for it....the fire department, what to do with it! We figured they deal with hazardous chemicals, the would know.
By now I have to go potty. I cannot go into the house again, they have giant fans trying to suck the ick out of my house, and its dark and nasty.
I go to JKF house. We chat for a minute, then I head back home. Its dark. Not just dark, but DARK. The firemen have rolled up their hoses, unplugged their lights and left. Its DARK. I call out to hubby..just so I can find my way. We walk back to the front of the house and stand there, alone in the dark.
Everyone has gone home. The firemen finally had brought out some pants for hubby and his shoes wallet and keys..he's standing there dressed, I'm in my jammies, no bra. We stand there alone, in the dark, looking at our house...what was left of our house, utterly alone. Lost, scared, clueless. We had no where to go....we didn't know if we should go somewhere, should we stay?
Now what?
Up Next..Part 5 Why Walmart???
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