getting woken in the middle of the night.

There is something rather surreal about watching a house burn down. Even more so when its 1am, your standing on the lawn in your pyjamas and its the neighbor's house that's being consumed by the flames. 

It was summer time and I had left my window open to catch the breeze. I was woken by lots of people talking and shouting and by a strange crackling sound. I lay there for a few seconds wondering what was going on before raising myself on one arm and using the other to pull the curtain aside. At that stage ot much of the fire could be seen just flames licking out around the loungeroom chimney. Most of the fire was within the roofspace, hidden below the corrugated iron.

I must say, it took me a further minute or two before my sleep-fuddled brain processed what was going on next door. It took a further minute or two to pull on trackpants and stumble into the next room shouting to wake my housemate. By then the house was well alight. The only thing I could do was move my car which had been parked along the side of the house facing the neighbors. I had to be quick since the firetrucks were already arriving. The neighbors on the other side of the housefire were frantically detaching and moving the four LPG gas tanks that are on the side of their house in the direct path of the fire.

The house was owned by an old Italian couple. She became quite frail and even though he was still pretty active, he wasn't really physically capable of looking after her. She was moved to a nursing home in the city up the road and he went with her. Their grandson, his wife and baby lived in the house for a while but they moved back out to the family farm and the house has sat empty since then. I didn't realise it, but all the elderly couple's possessions had been left in place since grandad used to like to re-visit his house. Now all that is gone up in smoke. Standing there on the side lawn beside the old couple's daughter, son and grandson we could only watch in disbelief as the firemen swarmed like ants.

Our fire department is made up of volunteers but they did a marvelous job. There was little they could do to save the building so it was just a matter of putting the fire out as quickly as possible. All they saved was a bundle of framed photographs and a couple of vintage cameras. Mopping up the last of the hotspots took ages. It was a good four hours before everyone packed up and left and I could go back to bed. I managed to get a couple of hours sleep before work in the morning. Getting out was rather interesting by dodging the police cars and media crews. I even had the chance to be interviewed by a news crew but ducked out. This face belongs on the other side of the camera lens, thankyou!

At least I had a great excuse to explain why I was so dopey at work that day!