On April 18, 2004 around 4:30am, Beth and I woke up to the small of a camp fire. I quickly dismissed it and went back to sleep, but she actually opened her eyes and realized that there was smoke in our house. She looked down the hall and saw the bright orange flames of a fire in our den. She immediately started screaming and
woke me and the kids up. I tried to put out the flames with our fire extinguisher but that didn't work, so we started getting everyone out of the house. Luckily, once outside you couldn't see any flames, so our kids weren't subject to that horror.Within a few minutes, we had friends on the scene who took our kids away while we waited for the fire department to get done. We stood there and just watched and listened as our house just burned up. Again, we couldn't see any flames but we know what was happening. After and hour or so, we were allowed to start looking inside the house. Everything was black because the house was pretty air-tight and smoke wasn't allowed to escape, so it just filled everything in the house. We lost all our furniture, clothes, toys, etc. Thankfully, we didn't lose any pictures we had.
It was hard going threw the house. The biggest tragedy that day was that we lost one of our dogs. We thought she got out with the other one, but realized shortly after the fire dept got there, that she didn't. I am grateful that friends were there because a friend named Joe buried her in the back yard, and I didn't have to do it.
The whole experience was life changing. We asked many questions of why it happened to us, and we never really found an answer. It has been hard replacing everything and with the help of church, family and friends we were given enough to get a good jump on furnishing on next house.
It seems weird in the fact that while I was growing up, I never really experienced any hardships. My sister had a house fire, but it was nothing major and I will in the 11th grade. But my kids, who are 8, 7, and 2, have experienced some major changes in their life. They had the house fire, have more several times, been to a couple different schools and church and lost their grandfather. My daughter still cries when we bring up the house fire cause she loved that dog. Both of them still talk about their papaw...
It is amazing what some people go through...
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