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Not Getting Burned

I just got word that a friend’s house I’d adored when I stayed there this summer was spared in the San Diego fires. You wanna talk about close calls? That’s his house on the left in this photo. All he suffered was some minor damage to the side like a melted screen door. Even the fish in his Koi pond that separated the houses survived. At the time I visited I thought a side yard was an odd place for a Koi pond but who knows? Maybe it helped in some way.

While I can’t fully fathom what it’s like to suffer the kind of loss his neighbor did, I can sort of, barely relate because we had a house fire when I was a kid. Here’s the story:

It was the first day of school in second grade. Dad was still at work and Mom had fixed us cold tuna sandwiches for dinner because it was such a hot day. Midway through dinner we heard the fire alarm go off and saw smoke coming from down the hallway. Mom told us all to get out and I took off running down the street yelling like a maniac that our house was on fire. I passed about five houses before I realized this wasn’t the movies and my house probably wasn’t going to blow.

Mom had been wearing just a bra and underwear so she wrapped a towel around herself to cover up. The man from the house below ours ran up the hill and hopped the fence to help. He grabbed the towel off Mom- I guess thinking he could put the fire out with it- so she pulled out the first thing she could from the hallway closet: a half-length fur coat (don’t hate- Grandpa was a furrier back before it was uncool to do that). So there we were, most of the neighborhood standing in our front yard in 90 degree heat while Mom stood there in a fur coat and no pants (a scene that totally belongs in a movie).

The fire had been caused by a faulty tv that had been loaned to us by the repair shop that was taking way too long to fix ours. While the house didn’t suffer major structural damage, the smoke and water damage was enough to force us to live in a Howard Johnson’s for a month (which, I’ll admit, I really enjoyed because it had a pool and we got driven to school instead of having to walk). And we lost a few items that, at that age, seemed rather precious. There was the carpeting in the playroom that had a bunch of games designed on it and the three story doll house with the elevator that Mom had built for us. And my sister- my poor, poor sister- I think she still has nightmares over the loss of her beloved pair of Dittos. Who can blame her? They did wonders for a fifth grader’s ass.

People always say that in situations like this the essential items to rescue are their loved ones and their pictures/videos. And I take some comfort that in this digital era more and more people will be able to preserve those. I’m just so thankful that my brother recently took the time to digitize about 20 years’ worth of videos so we’ll never have to worry about losing those. I can only hope that other victims of the fires were able to escape with their scrapbooks intact.

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