Our neighbor is doing as well as can be expected given the circumstances. She was checked out at the hospital for smoke inhalation and released within a few hours. On top of the smoking and emphysema, she also suffers from a leaky heart valve and is due for heart surgery in the next month or two, so her health was rather precarious before the fire. Her poor home is also in sorry shape and is currently being cleaned out by a disaster cleanup crew while she and her extended family members try to salvage what they can. As of yesterday, she was talking about fixing it up and returning to live in it, eventually, but I guess that will depend in part on the insurance settlement. For now, she'll be living in a long-term stay hotel.
In other news, Muffin and Geek #2 attended preschool orientation today and she had a great time playing with all of the toys and looking at all of the children. She'll start attending on M/W/F next week and should have a blast with all the activities and very sweet teachers. And I, Geek #2, will get 3 mornings a week to actually do things! Yippee!
Thursday, August 28, 2008
Fire Update & Other News
Wednesday, August 27, 2008
Some Mornings are More Exciting
First, the good news: Our neighbor is fine. We're fine. Our house is fine.
The bad: our neighbor's house caught fire this morning and she managed to call 911 before escaping with her life. More bad: she started it by smoking. Now, we were worried that she was going to blow up her house when we saw the oxygen tanks delivered last week (to help with her emphysema and enlarged heart) because she's a smoker. But apparently she just set the couch on fire with a cigarette and it spread from there.
To combat the fire, there were 4 large firetrucks, 3 ambulances, lots of fire chiefs, and an entire firefighter rookie class of 20 guys or so, on our quiet little street. Very active for a while, but they've all left except for a small truck with two guys who seem to be watching the house for outbreaks.
I'm attaching a couple pics of the fire crew and one of the back of our neighbor's house showing what look like drapes hanging down, but is actually the melted vinyl siding from her soffit. The smoke was billowing out the ridge vents along the roof, the fire went up into the attic and the house appears to be totaled on the inside.
Muffin thought it was quite interesting to see all the firefighters she's read about in books and she saw both the new ECU Pirate theme fire truck plus normal red trucks. It is now 9:30 AM and I think we'll call it a day...