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Apr. 12, 2005 It was Friday, April 8, 2005, 2AM. After playing a few good games of Lottso on Pogo.com with Geoff, we decide it's time to go to bed. After walking upstairs and having a slight debate on whether or not to let my son stay in his grandmother's room or put him in his own room, we decide to move him. Just as we pull the safety gate off of the door, all the lights in the house go out. Except for four wall sockets and the light over the stove. Geoff and I walk down to the basement to pop whatever fuse had blown, and find that they are all okay. 2:30AM. Paranoia takes us over. We decided that all three of us will sleep in my mother's room at the top of the stairs with the door locked and an excercise machine blocking it. A feeling of "something bad is going to happen" falls on us. Geoff thinks someone is going to break into the house. He sleeps with his arm over his chest, in fear of a gunshot. I lie in bed coughing, with horrible visions of fire in my head. Around 3AM, we fall asleep. 4AM. High pitched beeping. Smoke alarm beeping. Stomping outside the door. There is someone in the house! Geoff and I sit up, almost simutanously, and look at each other. "I smell burning plastic." I grab the phone and dial 9-1-1. "My house is on fire, and I think we're trapped." We hear more stomping outside the bedroom door, and in hope I yell my brother's name "Joey?!?" He yells back, "Mom is that you?" "No! It's me!" "The house is on fire!" He screams. Geoff whips the door open, busting the lock off the door and kicks down the safety gate. My brother yells at me to put a shirt on, as I only sleep in underwear. I throw on a sweater and run out of the house with my son. This entire exchange lasts under a minute, and by the time we get outside there are two Southbridge police officers outside. I look up at my brother's bedroom window on the third floor. Thick black smoke is pouring out of it. The officer I run in to begins yelling toward the house, my brother ran back in the house to get me a pair of pajama pants. Everyone gets out of the house and Geoff, my son, and I sit in a police car and watch the house burn. When I return to the house the next day to see what was or wasn't destroyed, I find that fire isn't the only damage there is. Smoke and water damage are all over the house, with the most water damage in my bedroom (directly under my brother's room) and the living room (directly under my room). I walk up to my brother's bedroom, and find ash. That's all. If you've ever seen a burnt piece of paper, that's what his whole room looked like, everything he owned was gone. The police ask Geoff and I to go to the police station so they can ask us a few questions. Basically, it was almost an hour of them asking us if we burned our house down. Then the questions turned to whether or not we thought my brother could have done it. He didn't. It was an electrical fire. The second electrical fire my house had in a month. There was one on February 28th in the bathroom, but it seemed like it was just smoking in the wall socket, and once the fire marshall said it was okay, we thought nothing of it. Well, now my family and I are in limbo. The Red Cross came and gave us some money to get food and clothes, and it was great to see my brother go through Wal-Mart buying new clothes. He's one of those people who tries to keep a tough face even when it's bad, but he wasn't doing a very good job this time around, justifiably. My son and I have been moved to the top of the emergency housing list. My mother has moved in with my aunt, and my brother is living with his best friend. He also changed a few of his screen names to "smoking joe". I can't really say that the whole fire was "devestating" because while a lot of our posessions were lost, everyone got out without a scratch. My brother is slowly getting his things back together, and once I get it through the housing department's collective mind that my son and I won't be moving into a homeless shelter to wait for an apartment, we'll be okay. I learned this time around that while fire is just damn scary, there are more important things in this world than "stuff". And there are heros where you least expect it, like the boyfriend who wants nothing more than to get the cat out of the house, but can't because the firemen won't let him in. Or the older brother, who even though all his things are burning, will run back into the bruning house just to get his sister a pair of pants. Life goes on, and everything will be okay. I don't know the exact reason of writing this article. Maybe it was just to get the whole night out my head, even though I'm sure it won't be going anywhere. I feel strange, reading the newspaper and seeing the headline "Four homeless after early morning fire." It's one of those surreal moments where you realize that all those times you said "glad it's not me", it really is you this time. Thank you for reading, again I don't exactly know why I wrote this, but I feel better now that I have. ------------ About the author L.J. Chapman: I am a mother of two kids. I run a freelance business online, called LJC Freelance Inc. I'm trying to get a novel written, but I am a mother of two. Email: sublime_girl441980@yahoo.com Tell a friend about this site! ------------ All articles are EXCLUSIVE to Useless-Knowledge.com and are not allowed to be posted on other websites. ARTICLE THIEVES WILL BE PROSECUTED! |
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