I-stone
19th February 2014, 06:06 PM
I wrote this note for my town, it is called 'Ash' and is my experience of being in a house fire. It is written like this to convey my feelings.
I figure that I owe it to everyone to tell what happened from my side.
I was having a rough couple of months.I wanted to go into town that night to go freediving in hopes that it improve how I felt a little. I am on a vehicle boycott, I refuse to own a traditional car. So I carpool. However, Danni refused to drive me to town, for no real apparent reason. I got very upset about that, as per my disdain for senseless irrationality. It took some great effort to resolve my feelings.
I felt it was probably better if I stay because the water pipes were still frozen after 3 days, and Sara is pregnant. I could help her stock the giant cast iron boiler in the basement with wood.
That night I decided to sleep in the empty downstairs bedroom instead of my own room. For no reason other than that my room was making me feel uncomfortable. Whenever I slept in my room I would wake up multiple times thinking I was choking on something. I hoped to get some decent sleep in the downstairs room. I went to sleep very early, around 8.
Laying in bed I prayed to have one decent night of rest. That for once the feelings haunting me would leave me alone.
I slept unusually deep. I woke up feeling rested. But most importantly at ease. As I was laying in bed full of gratitude, I saw a flickering orange light dance on the ceiling through the window.
'What is that? Christmas lights?'
Then a strange sound. Like ice cracking.
I walked out into the kitchen.
Behind the glass windows looking into the covered patio was flames.
The sensation and scene is engraved into my memory.
It was surreal. Like the meeting of two alternate dimensions. One, the hellish smoke and fire swelling into the room just outside the window. The windows that seemed to contain the hell, like an invisible force field allowed me to see into this alternate dimension. And two, the house, with all the wood work, decades of memories, the kitchen and plants more beautifull than I had ever remembered. The light of hell shined through the window, reflecting off the hardwood floor me and David had just installed. A luxury we never thought we would have, but here it is, more beautiful than ever in the firelight. It was serene, impossible.
The outside pane of the window shattered. Time is short. There's no water. There's no chance to put out the fire."We're ♥♥♥♥ed." I say there are rare occasions when cussing is appropriate. This is an example of one.There's only one thing to do. Evacuate.I walk quickly up the stairs to mom and Larry's room.
"There's a fire, get up." No response. "There's a fire. Get up NOW."
"Huh?.." Neither of them really move.
I decided to reassess the fire and went back down stairs.The fire outside is raging. The last pane of glass is cracked, smoke is seeping through. There is no chance. The house will burn, and we will too if we don't get out immediately. I decide I better become aggressive, or someone will die. I grab a 1 by 2 that happen to be leaning against the wall. This time I run up the stairs. Mom and Larry are still in bed. I swing the board hard against the door.
"GET UP NOW! The HOUSE IS BURNING DOWN!"
Mom sits up in bed. She makes her way toward me, still partly asleep. She stumbles down the stairs behind me. I assume Lary is right behind her. The fire alarms go off when we get to the bottom of the stairs. A barely noticeable beep.The realization finally seems to hit mom.
The last pane of glass shatters. Smoke billows into the kitchen. By the time we get to the mudroom the power goes out.
Mom runs down to the bottom of the stairs. I wait at the door for Larry. After a minute or two mom freaks out and starts screaming his name.
'What the hell, why isn't he here?!' Smoke is already billowing out the front door. I try franticaly to figure out what to do. They say you should never go in after a person. They also say only grab your shoes and coat, but we only had seconds, there was no time for shoes or coat.
I am standing at the front door staring into the void. Inky black smoke pouring out of rumbling pitch blackness. I have no idea what is in there, what it is like, or what will happen if I go in. The smoke itself seemed to be pure, undiluted fear. I thought of the balrog from Lord of the Rings. This must be where the artist got his inspiration.
I go in, there is absolutely no light. There is no air, only burning hot smoke that feels thick. I can feel it sliding down my throat. Wood smoked laced with burning paint and melting carpet. I get just past the mudroom door before fear and smoke overcome me. Worse than anything is the darkness. Running into a burning house is terrifying. But running into a burning house totally blind to look for someone when you have no idea where they are.. is insane. I go back to the front door. There should be a gas mask in the corner of the mudroom. I fumble around for it, but don't feel it anywhere. With a mask I felt I would be able to go in. I would be far more brave if I didn't have to worry about breathing.
Mom's screaming brings Sara and Nigel out of the little house. After a moment Nigel comes running up without a thread of clothes on him. He plunges into the wall of smoke and darkness. He must have decided that it was a bad idea to run into a burning house naked. He runs back out to get clothes on. But, like everybody, even simple things like putting on clothes was near impossible.
'There is no time! Larry is in there somewhere in that hell. He's burning alive! Can I live with letting him die?' I imagined me waiting outside as he burned to death.
It seemed like I could hear him talking to me in my head, 'Don't you dare leave me in here.' He seemed to say.
I feel Larry's life begin to slip away. This is it. I have wondered my whole life if I would give my life to save another. When faced by death would I cower in fear? Did I really believe in an afterlife. This is the moment.
'Crawl.'
Why didn't I think of that before? The air down near the floor is breathable. Suddenly I believe I could do it, just crawl. I pulled myself along beneath the smoke. I hear roaring fire and breaking glass but see nothing but solid black. Every foot feels like a victory. And every foot like a mile. It is hot and the smoke is thick. It could ignite any moment, turning the entire interior into an inferno. I make it into the living room. "Larry! Larry! Where are you!" I hear a faint, monotone croak, "Help." I suddenly know exactly where he is. I reach out into the black and grab his foot. I disregard my concerns for further injuring him and pull as hard as I can. Inch by inch we make our way through the dark back to the front door. He gets caught on something. I become exhausted by the time we reach the front door and I wished I had miraculous adrenaline strength. Nigel said I passed out, but I don't remember that.
I am outside the house with Larry. He is breathing in strange broken gasps. His clothes are burned and falling off him. I thought gloves were hanging from his hands in tatters, it wasn't until later that I realized it wasn't cloth, but his skin. I struggled to get him down the stairs and away from the front door. Fire could blast out of it any second. I was angry because nobody was helping. Mom was stuck in a loop screaming "Larry!" Everyone was too out of it to do anything. "Shut up and help me!" I yell to her. She snaps out of it and we get him down to the truck. Sara and Nigel call 911.
I am entranced by the burning house. It was horrible, but I wanted to see. Fire was blowing out the windows and the attic. We had indeed made it out just in time. Everyone tries to offer plans on what to do next. I resist the urge to go with any of them, nobody makes very good plans when they are panicked.
"I have to go to the hospital." Larry says. I had forgotten that Larry may be gravely injured. "Lets drive Larry to town. He says he needs to go to the hospital. I believe him." I say.
It is essential that we had left just then. The main killer from fires is from the smoke. It causes the throat to swell, which makes it impossible to breath. The EMT's managed to get an air hose down his throat before it swelled, saving his life. He had 2nd and 3rd degree burns over 20% of his body.
I've been having constant flashbacks. It was terrifying for me, but I keep imagining Larry. Laying there in the darkness, slowly burning wondering why nobody has saved him yet. I wish I had gone back in the second I realized he was not right behind me. But hes alive, that's what matters most. My conscience probably couldn't have taken it if he had died.
That day seemed like a month. So many things happened. So many things changed. Everything I was doing before is gone. Now it is all new. But what is new? I want it to be better than before, or whats the point of starting over? I plowed through the constant flashbacks. Every time I told the story I relived it. It made me sick, but it helped by forcing me to face it. I have already metabolized the event for the most part. The whole family is doing very well facing it. Considering that your house burning down is one of the worst things that can happen in your life, besides your house burning down with your family in it. We went back to the property the other day. Seeing the ruins was more intense than I imagined it would be. It is like a piece of reality has been ripped from this world, leaving a ragged smoking hole. The fire was unbelievably hot. Every single thing, every single inch burned. Nothing survived but some crumbling pottery and a few cast iron pans. Even most of the copper pipes and steel burned to crumbling rust. I found a smiling sun Daniel made out of porcelain when he was a child. I imagined it smiling though the inferno blazed and swirled about it. Smiling even as it became white hot and began to slump. It was fitting because that is Daniel's attitude even now.
I was a little angry at how thoroughly the fire had burned. Porcelain melts at about 2600 degrees. Not even stone objects survived. Everyone hoped for some memento from the house, and got very exited about anything we found, but really there is nothing left but rubble.
I lament the loss of all the art I had done in my life, and all the paints and tools for making more. But my greatest loss was my vast collection of journals. I had been keeping journals for the last 16 years. I started them because I felt I had some very magnificent, epic or benevolent thoughts and I was afraid of forgetting. Thankfully I had gone over them the night before the fire, there wasn't a whole lot of thoughts in there that were of real value now. Much of it was quite negative I thought. However, the dream logs were invaluable. I read one I had completely forgot. I touched heaven in the dream. Life changing. It was beautiful and uplifting. I wonder how many other dreams like that I had recorded and forgotten. I don't really care about sentimental or physical losses. Spiritual losses are the one thing that I have great trouble coping with. Loosing all those dream logs is a spiritual loss. I learn primarily from dreams. I portray them in my art. They were often more fantastic than what I could imagine. I had plans to write books or make movies about them. I dug through the ash hoping to find a few fragile sheets of carbonated paper from my journals, but there is no chance. I hope that somewhere, in some dimension, those beautiful thoughts and dreams are recorded to be relived and relearned when I die.
Intervention
There were many things that happened that saved our lives.
If Danni had driven me to town, I would not have been there to wake the others. Mom and Larry said they slept very hard that night, they wouldn't have woke up. She later told me she didn't know why she didn't want to drive me.
If I had slept in my room I would not have seen the fire and probably would have choked out on the smoke.
If I hadn't gone to sleep early I wouldn't have woke up at 1:30am to see the first visible flames.
If there had been water, we would have tried to fight it, and someone may have been hurt or worse.
If mom and Larry had parished nobody would have called 911. The trees near the house would have caught fire, which would have caught the diesel tank and possibly the little house. Sara and Nigel were staying in the little house.
If David Folletti hadn't put in the new hardwood floor the week before, the fire would have shot through the plywood kitchen floor, igniting the smoke when I was dragging Larry out. The firemen said that the basement and attic burned first, that may have been because of the hardwood floor.
I figure that I owe it to everyone to tell what happened from my side.
I was having a rough couple of months.I wanted to go into town that night to go freediving in hopes that it improve how I felt a little. I am on a vehicle boycott, I refuse to own a traditional car. So I carpool. However, Danni refused to drive me to town, for no real apparent reason. I got very upset about that, as per my disdain for senseless irrationality. It took some great effort to resolve my feelings.
I felt it was probably better if I stay because the water pipes were still frozen after 3 days, and Sara is pregnant. I could help her stock the giant cast iron boiler in the basement with wood.
That night I decided to sleep in the empty downstairs bedroom instead of my own room. For no reason other than that my room was making me feel uncomfortable. Whenever I slept in my room I would wake up multiple times thinking I was choking on something. I hoped to get some decent sleep in the downstairs room. I went to sleep very early, around 8.
Laying in bed I prayed to have one decent night of rest. That for once the feelings haunting me would leave me alone.
I slept unusually deep. I woke up feeling rested. But most importantly at ease. As I was laying in bed full of gratitude, I saw a flickering orange light dance on the ceiling through the window.
'What is that? Christmas lights?'
Then a strange sound. Like ice cracking.
I walked out into the kitchen.
Behind the glass windows looking into the covered patio was flames.
The sensation and scene is engraved into my memory.
It was surreal. Like the meeting of two alternate dimensions. One, the hellish smoke and fire swelling into the room just outside the window. The windows that seemed to contain the hell, like an invisible force field allowed me to see into this alternate dimension. And two, the house, with all the wood work, decades of memories, the kitchen and plants more beautifull than I had ever remembered. The light of hell shined through the window, reflecting off the hardwood floor me and David had just installed. A luxury we never thought we would have, but here it is, more beautiful than ever in the firelight. It was serene, impossible.
The outside pane of the window shattered. Time is short. There's no water. There's no chance to put out the fire."We're ♥♥♥♥ed." I say there are rare occasions when cussing is appropriate. This is an example of one.There's only one thing to do. Evacuate.I walk quickly up the stairs to mom and Larry's room.
"There's a fire, get up." No response. "There's a fire. Get up NOW."
"Huh?.." Neither of them really move.
I decided to reassess the fire and went back down stairs.The fire outside is raging. The last pane of glass is cracked, smoke is seeping through. There is no chance. The house will burn, and we will too if we don't get out immediately. I decide I better become aggressive, or someone will die. I grab a 1 by 2 that happen to be leaning against the wall. This time I run up the stairs. Mom and Larry are still in bed. I swing the board hard against the door.
"GET UP NOW! The HOUSE IS BURNING DOWN!"
Mom sits up in bed. She makes her way toward me, still partly asleep. She stumbles down the stairs behind me. I assume Lary is right behind her. The fire alarms go off when we get to the bottom of the stairs. A barely noticeable beep.The realization finally seems to hit mom.
The last pane of glass shatters. Smoke billows into the kitchen. By the time we get to the mudroom the power goes out.
Mom runs down to the bottom of the stairs. I wait at the door for Larry. After a minute or two mom freaks out and starts screaming his name.
'What the hell, why isn't he here?!' Smoke is already billowing out the front door. I try franticaly to figure out what to do. They say you should never go in after a person. They also say only grab your shoes and coat, but we only had seconds, there was no time for shoes or coat.
I am standing at the front door staring into the void. Inky black smoke pouring out of rumbling pitch blackness. I have no idea what is in there, what it is like, or what will happen if I go in. The smoke itself seemed to be pure, undiluted fear. I thought of the balrog from Lord of the Rings. This must be where the artist got his inspiration.
I go in, there is absolutely no light. There is no air, only burning hot smoke that feels thick. I can feel it sliding down my throat. Wood smoked laced with burning paint and melting carpet. I get just past the mudroom door before fear and smoke overcome me. Worse than anything is the darkness. Running into a burning house is terrifying. But running into a burning house totally blind to look for someone when you have no idea where they are.. is insane. I go back to the front door. There should be a gas mask in the corner of the mudroom. I fumble around for it, but don't feel it anywhere. With a mask I felt I would be able to go in. I would be far more brave if I didn't have to worry about breathing.
Mom's screaming brings Sara and Nigel out of the little house. After a moment Nigel comes running up without a thread of clothes on him. He plunges into the wall of smoke and darkness. He must have decided that it was a bad idea to run into a burning house naked. He runs back out to get clothes on. But, like everybody, even simple things like putting on clothes was near impossible.
'There is no time! Larry is in there somewhere in that hell. He's burning alive! Can I live with letting him die?' I imagined me waiting outside as he burned to death.
It seemed like I could hear him talking to me in my head, 'Don't you dare leave me in here.' He seemed to say.
I feel Larry's life begin to slip away. This is it. I have wondered my whole life if I would give my life to save another. When faced by death would I cower in fear? Did I really believe in an afterlife. This is the moment.
'Crawl.'
Why didn't I think of that before? The air down near the floor is breathable. Suddenly I believe I could do it, just crawl. I pulled myself along beneath the smoke. I hear roaring fire and breaking glass but see nothing but solid black. Every foot feels like a victory. And every foot like a mile. It is hot and the smoke is thick. It could ignite any moment, turning the entire interior into an inferno. I make it into the living room. "Larry! Larry! Where are you!" I hear a faint, monotone croak, "Help." I suddenly know exactly where he is. I reach out into the black and grab his foot. I disregard my concerns for further injuring him and pull as hard as I can. Inch by inch we make our way through the dark back to the front door. He gets caught on something. I become exhausted by the time we reach the front door and I wished I had miraculous adrenaline strength. Nigel said I passed out, but I don't remember that.
I am outside the house with Larry. He is breathing in strange broken gasps. His clothes are burned and falling off him. I thought gloves were hanging from his hands in tatters, it wasn't until later that I realized it wasn't cloth, but his skin. I struggled to get him down the stairs and away from the front door. Fire could blast out of it any second. I was angry because nobody was helping. Mom was stuck in a loop screaming "Larry!" Everyone was too out of it to do anything. "Shut up and help me!" I yell to her. She snaps out of it and we get him down to the truck. Sara and Nigel call 911.
I am entranced by the burning house. It was horrible, but I wanted to see. Fire was blowing out the windows and the attic. We had indeed made it out just in time. Everyone tries to offer plans on what to do next. I resist the urge to go with any of them, nobody makes very good plans when they are panicked.
"I have to go to the hospital." Larry says. I had forgotten that Larry may be gravely injured. "Lets drive Larry to town. He says he needs to go to the hospital. I believe him." I say.
It is essential that we had left just then. The main killer from fires is from the smoke. It causes the throat to swell, which makes it impossible to breath. The EMT's managed to get an air hose down his throat before it swelled, saving his life. He had 2nd and 3rd degree burns over 20% of his body.
I've been having constant flashbacks. It was terrifying for me, but I keep imagining Larry. Laying there in the darkness, slowly burning wondering why nobody has saved him yet. I wish I had gone back in the second I realized he was not right behind me. But hes alive, that's what matters most. My conscience probably couldn't have taken it if he had died.
That day seemed like a month. So many things happened. So many things changed. Everything I was doing before is gone. Now it is all new. But what is new? I want it to be better than before, or whats the point of starting over? I plowed through the constant flashbacks. Every time I told the story I relived it. It made me sick, but it helped by forcing me to face it. I have already metabolized the event for the most part. The whole family is doing very well facing it. Considering that your house burning down is one of the worst things that can happen in your life, besides your house burning down with your family in it. We went back to the property the other day. Seeing the ruins was more intense than I imagined it would be. It is like a piece of reality has been ripped from this world, leaving a ragged smoking hole. The fire was unbelievably hot. Every single thing, every single inch burned. Nothing survived but some crumbling pottery and a few cast iron pans. Even most of the copper pipes and steel burned to crumbling rust. I found a smiling sun Daniel made out of porcelain when he was a child. I imagined it smiling though the inferno blazed and swirled about it. Smiling even as it became white hot and began to slump. It was fitting because that is Daniel's attitude even now.
I was a little angry at how thoroughly the fire had burned. Porcelain melts at about 2600 degrees. Not even stone objects survived. Everyone hoped for some memento from the house, and got very exited about anything we found, but really there is nothing left but rubble.
I lament the loss of all the art I had done in my life, and all the paints and tools for making more. But my greatest loss was my vast collection of journals. I had been keeping journals for the last 16 years. I started them because I felt I had some very magnificent, epic or benevolent thoughts and I was afraid of forgetting. Thankfully I had gone over them the night before the fire, there wasn't a whole lot of thoughts in there that were of real value now. Much of it was quite negative I thought. However, the dream logs were invaluable. I read one I had completely forgot. I touched heaven in the dream. Life changing. It was beautiful and uplifting. I wonder how many other dreams like that I had recorded and forgotten. I don't really care about sentimental or physical losses. Spiritual losses are the one thing that I have great trouble coping with. Loosing all those dream logs is a spiritual loss. I learn primarily from dreams. I portray them in my art. They were often more fantastic than what I could imagine. I had plans to write books or make movies about them. I dug through the ash hoping to find a few fragile sheets of carbonated paper from my journals, but there is no chance. I hope that somewhere, in some dimension, those beautiful thoughts and dreams are recorded to be relived and relearned when I die.
Intervention
There were many things that happened that saved our lives.
If Danni had driven me to town, I would not have been there to wake the others. Mom and Larry said they slept very hard that night, they wouldn't have woke up. She later told me she didn't know why she didn't want to drive me.
If I had slept in my room I would not have seen the fire and probably would have choked out on the smoke.
If I hadn't gone to sleep early I wouldn't have woke up at 1:30am to see the first visible flames.
If there had been water, we would have tried to fight it, and someone may have been hurt or worse.
If mom and Larry had parished nobody would have called 911. The trees near the house would have caught fire, which would have caught the diesel tank and possibly the little house. Sara and Nigel were staying in the little house.
If David Folletti hadn't put in the new hardwood floor the week before, the fire would have shot through the plywood kitchen floor, igniting the smoke when I was dragging Larry out. The firemen said that the basement and attic burned first, that may have been because of the hardwood floor.