FIREPROOF YOUR HOME

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Although my lungs burned and my eyes were streaming from the smoke, I was able to snap the tab, depress the handle, and aim the powder stream into the heart of the fire. The flames and smoke diminished but the arcing didn't stop.

With the flashlight held up close, I discovered the arcing was coming from a tat cable. I groped along the cable till the insulation was cool enough to grasp. Then I hung from it and bounced with my full weight till it came free from the metal of the main fuse box. With the arcing gone, I turned to the wood fire extending from the plank support behind the fuse box and through a hole burned through the subflooring far up into the wall.

Putting Out the Fire

After this point, my memory is dim. All I knew was that my family was safely out and that I had to keep the fire under control till the volunteer fire fighters showed up. I somehow had to get water into the burning wall.

Though I was becoming woozy from the smoke, I realized with peculiar clarity that the big old water tank was full and pressurized. I failed to think of the garden hose coiled in a basement corner just a few feet from the fire. Instead I started running up and down the cellar stairs with a salad bowl filled with water from the kitchen sink. I'd throw the water into the burning wall cavity and run back to the kitchen. I don't recall how many trips I made, but suddenly our neighbor, Ed, was beside me with the big extinguisher he keeps by his fireplace. The chemical cloud (even more lung searing than the smoke from burning electric cable) drove us out of the cellar.

We stumbled out the front door just as the cars and pickup trucks of the "first responders" drove up, and oilskin-clothed fire fighters ran up with big extinguishers in hand. I guided them to the side of the house, tore open the cellar bulkhead door (still nailed shut for winter), and showed them the fire site. Then I went looking for Debra and the kids and found Debra lying on the ground exhausted and only semi-conscious from her desperate run, but with EMTs working over her.

After that my memory is even dimmer. We got into the ambulance. Ed and Marion and other caring neighbors divided up the kids. Then, Debbie, Dawn, and their EMT squad drove Debra and me to the emergency room for treatment-including a nastily burned hand that I didn't even feel till they began bandaging it.

Fortunately we were all safe, together, and back home the next afternoon. Over the following week, neighbors offered more help than we could begin to use. Food, clothing, and even household furnishings appeared at the front door. A borrowed gasoline electric generator powered the water pump and refrigerator, and we kept warm with donated wood while we cleaned out fire-damaged rooms. Volunteers used freely given building materials to patch holes in the inside and outer house walls that the fire fighters had to chop out to get at hidden hot spots.

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