FIRE DOWN BELOW

It is hard to describe what happened to me only 12 hours ago. It sort of feels like a heavy fog is over the whole event. I have no pictures of it, because there was no time to grab a camera. There was barely time enough to grab my family.

Last night at 9pm I came home from a coffee date with Krista. I was busy driving home when I turned the corner to my neighborhood and began to see embers. At first I thought, "Somebody must be barbequeing" but then I quickly saw the embers turn to bright orange fire twice as high as all our rooftops. It was only a few doors down from us and suddenly my stomach dropped to the floor.

As I approached my complex people were running everywhere and screaming. It was like I was watching a scene in a Godzilla movie or something. But I didn't see my boys anywhere, and my body went numb. I struggled to park the car, and pretty much gave up all together as half my body was already racing out to my house. I pushed past the people and burst through the door to find the boys playing happily on the couch. I could hardly get the words out, "FIRE... GET OUT.... WE HAVE TO GO.... FIRE TIM, FIRE!!!" He looked at me a little strange at first, but then he saw all the people screaming and running and quickly got the baby in his seat.

I raced up the stairs to put some clothes in a bag for the baby, but I couldn't think of anything to put in it and spent most of the time hyperventilating. When I went downstairs the boys were ready and we ran out the door to the half-parked car to see 4 firetrucks and numerous police cars. People were still all over the place with their half-parked cars, so it was hard to get out. But once we left our neighborhood that's when I really started to have a panic attack.

There is nothing as terrifying as thinking that your family is burning while you just went out and had a Starbucks. And I am still reeling from it. But we got to go home, once the fire was put out. It turns out that it was an arsen and someone set fire to the brush behind our fences (which I have always thought was a fire hazard).

Our neighborhood has had nothing but crime for 2 months. My car got broken into, our neighbors cars have been broken into and now our fences set on fire. I have got to get the heck out of dodge.