Except for the time the gas stove caught on fire at my sister's and the firetrucks came* we have only had to have the fire department come to our house for a fire twice. ( It doesn't count that time a little old lady couldn't get her breath and thought she better get oxygen or something and the fireman were the first responders and when she saw that the firemen in their uniforms these days are amazingly healthy looking, even though they were about thirty years younger than she was and she could suddenly breathe just fine but it WAS pretty hot in there and---where was I?)
Oh, yeah. Right after we moved to Oklahoma City our friends from Los Angeles came to visit us and when we returned late at night after taking them back to the airport we turned onto our street and there was a huge firetruck in front of our house and some firemen were on the roof and some others were getting ready to take one of those big hatchets to the door to get in the house. We got the key to them just before the first blow.
Apparently our house had been struck by lightening and the roof was on fire but the neighbors across the street saw the flames and called the fire department. If you have ever been close to a lightening strike you know that the sound is louder than seven sonic booms, so when we unlocked the door to let the firemen in, our thirty pound dog, who had been born and raised in California where they almost never even have thunder storms made a flying leap out the door and into my arms about ten feet into the yard, her feet never touching the ground. I would tell you that she had diarrhea for about six months after that but it would be too much information. And the rest of her life she sensed storms coming at least two hours before Gary England, the weather guy, and glued herself to my legs, shaking like a California aftershock, until they passed.
The weird thing about the lightening strike was that, while there was about a ten foot square hole in the roof, inside the house only the low-voltage things were affected: the doorbell, the answering machine, the ice-maker. Some of the ice cubes actually had burn lines across them. Did I mention that the lightening had struck right above the refrigerator? God may have been trying to tell us something.
Here is what you are supposed to do when there is a fire: Wake up your spouse, wake up the kids, grab the pets if you can and get the heck out of there and call 911 from outside or a neighbor's house
Here is what we did the next time our house was struck by lightening: Ginormous bang louder than a truck hitting the house and exploding. We sat up, looked at each other and said "What was that??" and went back to sleep. Then, about an hour later, Dennis: "Do you smell something funny?" Me: "Yeah, do you?" We got up and sniffed around the house. It smelled kind of like plastic burning. We looked everywhere. We talked about it. We looked some more. We went upstairs where the smell was stronger. Finally we decided to get the kids up and out.
Jake had a friend spending the night and when Dennis went into their bedroom and told them to get up we probably had a fire, the friend turned over to go back to sleep. "Jake! Your dad's goofing around again." Finally, we got them up along with Josh, over whose bed the lightening had struck---you could see the sky through a hole about the size of a quarter in the ceiling---and the insulation around the ceiling beam was burning. The kids all got in the car in the garage, we moved the car into the driveway and somewhere in there we called 911. Even after the firemen had come and were going through the house looking for hot spots, the telephone that was in the garage started ringing and I couldn't stand it. After about 11 rings I and went in and answered it.
Do as I say and not as I do. Make a plan ahead of time, you never know what's in store. When there were grass fires so close to their house last summer that the fire department was telling our kids, Josh and Jerilyn, to be ready to evacuate at any moment, Jerilyn got the kids, the pets and some food into the car and was ready to go. Josh came home and, following the plan he had laid out in his mind---no doubt sometime when he was remembering that hole in the ceiling over his bed---came in and got important papers, Jerilyn's wedding dress (isn't he sweet?) his military coins and other irreplaceable things. This was because this time they had warning. You don't always know ahead of time. I heard once that you should have a "Grab and Go" box with important papers in it where you can get it out in case of fire. But mostly, you go.
We haven't had any grass fires that close here yet, but getting struck by lightening twice is plenty for me. I'm going to start listening really hard to hear if God is trying to get my attention and let Him do it a little less forcefully from now on.
*See my first blog: In The Beginning..." from 7/7/11
No comments:
Post a Comment