Monday, March 5, 2012

Weekend Recap 1: Thank God for Firemen

My weekend had some unwanted excitement in it, so I am separating this recap post from the high points of the weekend.

We live in an apartment complex with an attached parking garage.  Saturday evening when I took Sam out for a quick potty break before dinner, I noticed smoke coming from the parking garage.  I made Sam make quick work of her break and ran back up the stairs to ask the husband to go check it out...I thought someone was trying to make BBQ in the parking lot too close to the building.  By the time the husband and I came back outside, which was less than a minute, we could see that there was a car with it's engine area completely on fire.

I immediately ran back into the house to grab my phone and call 911.  I grabbed Sam and got in my car, the husband into his truck to move our cars to a safer location.  The car that was on fire was parked about 10 spaces down from my car.

As it turns out when things are engulfed in flames, I am not that calm of a 911 caller.  Luckily, there had already been a call about the fire that was received and by the time I got to the bottom floor of the garage the fire department was arriving.  I was able to kind of calmly, point them to the closest stairs and tell them yell out what floor the fire was on.

The husband, Sammy and I returned back to the 3rd floor of the building, a safer distance from where the firemen were working, I was extra concerned that we had left Trixie inside.  Daniel was very reassuring that the fire would not make it to the buildings and certainly not down to our house.  I was working hard to try and believe him and not vomit from the fumes that had already given me a full blown headache.

Once the fire was out and the firemen (and women) were rolling up their hoses I was so overcome with appreciation and love for this group of people who had come and risked their safety to keep us safe.  They are truly amazing people and I am so happy they do what they do...I know I couldn't do it.  If you see a fireman today, tell them thank you.  I wanted to hug them all...what they call work is so heroic.


I found out later when I talked to the car's owner that this was a brand new Jeep that he had just purchased and driven off the lot.


He said that he had been home an hour and was headed back out to pick up dinner for him, his girlfriend and family and he saw smoke coming from under the hood.


He said he was happy they were hungry.  Can you imagine?  I told him I was so sorry, but also so happy he wasn't hurt.


The fire did jump to one other car in the parking lot.



To give you an idea of how close we were to the fire, that is Daniel's red truck in the back left of this picture.  Fires are so unpredictable and scary.  I am sure on the scale of things the fire fighters that responded to this call didn't think this was one of the scarier things they had seen.  I had never been around a real fire before, so it was very scary to me.  The fact that fire fighters battle fires that are 100 times worse than this one for complete strangers is so humbling.  I have such sincere gratitude for all people who work in a life saving line of work.  They are all heroes.  Thank them when you see them!

1 comment:

  1. so glad everyone is safe! I realized I'm not a calm 911 caller after we got rear-ended, seems so simple to say what's happening, til nerves/fear/adrenaline gets going!!

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