★ A Lesson in The Fragility of Life

I’m still a bit shook from today’s events. Six inches of snow will be falling on my cabin today and another 20+ inches tomorrow. I opted to work from home and not risk the icy drive home. At 1:30PM, my next door neighbors were moving cars into my drive way so I looked out and tried to listen to the conversation, “I can barely breathe” he says. I shift my focus the the sky and notice that a plume of smoke filled the sky above my yard…

I opened my back window and the house that was only 100 feet away from mine was shrouded in white smoke….I uttered, “Shit!”

Quickly throwing on snow pants, boots and gloves, I grabbed nothing and ran out into the yard. My neighbors were all a accounted for but rushing in to grab their things covering faces with their jackets to avoid breathing in the poisonous gasses. A police offer arrived with an extinguisher and exclaimed, “firemen are on their way! The roads are pretty bad!” and the officer started fighting flames.

Fire trucks arrived every ten minutes until a dozen trucks filled my yard and men yelled over radios organizing water and hoses. The local news showed up and started snapping photos but they were asked to leave by the fire marshall.

That’s when I began shaking.

My mind began thinking of the valuables in my house and I grabbed a police officer asking if I should start clearing my house. He softly said, “that propane tank may blow and, if it does, your house is gonna go too.” I began putting things together in boxes like my hard drives, guns, photos and a set of clothes. My suitcase was quickly stuffed for a 4 week trip and I shut down and disassembled my computers. I grabbed a framed photo of my father and stuffed it face up in a box among other photos.

My car was loaded up and I grabbed my camera and for the next two hours, snapped photos of the burning cabin. It was scary watching everything unfold. The lives of my close neighbors were shattering, literally as glass windows broke and the burning wood popped.

I watched the group of twenty something year old men standing together, each with cell phones plastered to their cheeks each telling their parents, “our house burned down and I’m okay.”

The time is now 5:30 and there is still a flame burning in the house. The owners finally got home and their tears were strong…I can understand their pain. I’ve been feeling it all day with just the mere thought of losing everything I own. Now, I sit on my couch, my things in boxes. My neighbors are all around me, each drinking my finest belgian beer and sipping my 21 year scotch. They’re celebrating that their lives are intact and their mobiles are going off with friends and family and the red cross calling to make sure they’re okay and making plans to take time off and replace their clothing.

The fire may rage on throughout the night. My house is lit with the lights of running trucks pumping water and I’m filling up air mattresses with air so my new best friends have a place to sleep tonight. 20 inches of snow falls tomorrow so I’ll have some house guests that need to be fed and entertained and I’m thrilled to have them; thrilled that they’re alive.

We all need that helping hand sometimes and it could have been me in that fire. I could be dead right now. Their lives were saved and now I wanna do my part to get them back on their feet.

Life is fragile and you could lose it all in an instant. There are insurance companies that will help you replace stuff, there are doctors to repair broken bones and firemen to put out the fires but our lives….they can’t be replaced. Our lives are precious.

Stay safe because each day may be your last.

Here are a few photos from today’s event: