Nov 18, 2008 07:59 am Oops. Glad everybody's OK.
Our town fire chief lives right across the street, which is somewhat comforting. Our neighborhood is nothing but trees though, and I can just see it going up like Chicago if a fire got out of hand.
A neighborhood house burned last night
Posted on Nov 18, 2008 07:50 am
dbmasters
Administrator Since: Apr 03, 2002
We got a call from another neighbor at 2:30 in the morning wondering what was up, look out the window, 3 houses away there is a house on fire. The house RIGHT NEXT DOOR to my youngest daughters friend's house, and the co-leader of my wife's girl scout troop.
Lights, cops, trucks, everything...flames shooting WAY into the sky.
Everybody got out OK, we don't know that neighbor well, but very sad. Just glad everybody got out OK. Quite the ruckus.
I guess they were building an addition on the back of their house and it caught fire somehow.
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Nov 18, 2008 07:59 am Oops. Glad everybody's OK.
Our town fire chief lives right across the street, which is somewhat comforting. Our neighborhood is nothing but trees though, and I can just see it going up like Chicago if a fire got out of hand.
Nov 18, 2008 08:02 am We JUST opened a new fire station about a mile from our neighborhood about 3 weeks ago...or, the official grand opening was three weeks ago, it's been opened a couple months...still, nice having them close.
Nov 18, 2008 08:04 am good everyone's ok. when i was a kid, the house down the street burned to the ground. i remember being upset my parents didnt wake me.
LA itself is on fire. i went up to an overlook last night after dark in hopes of seeing something. the sayre fire was, i assumed, on the north side of the valley, about ten miles away. i got up there and saw nothing at first. some haze over the valley below. and oddly it's really quiet up there in the hills. ten miles of basin and all the twinkling lights below, but all you hear are dogs barking in the distance and crickets. totally silent.
then the wind changed, and ten miles away i saw the eye of sauron. the most evil crimson light you could possibly imagine. dim, parts of it trending to infrared it seemed. just a blotch of evil to the north. it was awesome.
too bad about those peeps' houses, but look where they built.
Nov 18, 2008 08:08 am My aunt lives around the LA fire, Van Nuys, maybe, I forget, she moves around a lot. But she was talking to my dad a couple days ago and said she can hardly breath outside for long because of the smoke and stuff from the fires.
That's a real drag, it seems to happen pretty regular...on my daughters trip to the north shore for her evinomental study they saw the remnants of the north share/boundary water fires a while back...she said it was just ash and blackened, fallen trees...very sad...
Nov 18, 2008 08:46 am van nuys is less than 7 miles from me. i can smell the fires, and i think my nasal tissue has swollen to some degree perhaps, but i don't see anything really in the air. when florida burned, as it did many years on end when i was there, it was truly very bad. these fires seem like -- i dunno. they're up in the mountains so it's like the real smoke blows overhead at a higher altitude or something.
but yeah there's some physical effects on me. but at the same time i dont really notice it.
there are always fires here, every summer. you cannot smoke in the hills; there are signs everywhere.
Nov 18, 2008 02:06 pm Sorry to hear that happen to your neighbor. Has to suck seeing all of your possessions going up in flames.
But, at the same token. I'm glad to see that your not one of those types that sit out there with a camera just snapping away while someone is suffering.
Was it a total loss for your neighbor? I hope not.
Nov 18, 2008 02:17 pm Actually, as it turns out it was mostly back porch and back of house damage, though, from what I saw the smoke damage must be pretty bad...then, of course, I am sure all the water in the house froze after they left...
Though I heard later on the news that the family lost their dog in the fire, which is really sad.
No, no picture takers here, my wife did go over there though to let them know know if they were going to have to evacuate immediate neighbors that they were welcomed to our house to stay warm, make phone calls, get kids some sleep or whatever they may need...
Nov 18, 2008 02:58 pm Eesh, this brings back memories.
For those who are newer, our family experienced a house fire Dec 19, 2004. We were all OK, and our pets were retrieved unharmed. But the house was a goner. Our kids xmas presents were in the garage, so we still had that.
Our neighbor cross the street let us stay in her house for the rest of the nite, until we got ourselves together. That's a welcome assistance when you're stuck watching your house burn.
It was coldest yet that year: -6 f, and 30 mph winds. I was quite away from the house, and still felt very hot on my face / arms with the window open.
Speaking of picture snappers, I was one of them, sitting in our truck, watching the place burn. Here's one of my favorites:
On the positive side, we got a new house, and all new stuff, so it turned out better, i guess. Though living for most of a year out-of-sorts is pretty hard.
We took a trip to Orlando : universal studios for a week after the house was placed. Kind of a 'lets go have fun' reward for going thru crap for over a year.
Nov 18, 2008 03:02 pm Holy crap, theirs wasn't up like that!
Just so you know, as I watched the flames go up, you actually crossed my mind, I remembered your story.
Nov 18, 2008 03:06 pm yeah, it keeps coming to my mind too =).
Ah well, it's only stuff. Nobody was hurt (sorry to hear about your neighbor's pet, though).
I heard somewhere that most people experience 1 major fire in their life. Hopefully I'll be clear from here on out =).
Nov 18, 2008 04:17 pm Ouch pjk. I didn't know that you went though that. I know it's a little belated, but, Sorry that happened to you.
I don't think that the shutter bug thing applies when it's your own place. When your doing it to others, filming, and just looking over at them and saying "Sucks to be you". That's when I feel that a line has been crossed.
Nov 18, 2008 04:53 pm so is that all auralex foam burning there? :)
Nov 18, 2008 05:14 pm Ha, actually, the foam was in the garage =).
No foolin, it really was.
The house sparkiness, was due to it being (probably) built with tamarack, and using balloon construction, where the studs run down the entire length of the house (both floors). That way the fire can travel down, or up, through the walls, and spread much quicker.
The culprit was a chimney fire, so now our fire burner is outside, and runs water pipes into the house. Much nicer.
Nov 18, 2008 05:17 pm Quote:
That's when I feel that a line has been crossed.
eh, i guess so.
My cousin came over a few days after, and took some pictures. She didn't know I was there, pokin around. She felt bad, and was apologetic about snapping pix.
Heh, didn't bother me, I was taking pix as well.
Nov 18, 2008 07:48 pm Sorry to hear that dB. Lucky it was not a total burn down then though. Someone was watching out a little for them as all were safe.
pjk, you could be close to right on that bit. Mine was not a house but a trailer. I and a buddy ran a horse boarding ranch for a bit after high school and lived on it as I owned a couple of quarter horses at the time it seemed a good fit.
But he had a friggin retarded cat, and yes I mean retarded as in not right in the head. I had a pretty large portion of vinyl there as well as a nice hand built custom stereo rig. The dumb arse cat chewed thru a power cable and the fire started there from the short.
My future father in law was the first one there as he was fire chief back then. Being a trailer of course it was gone in 60 seconds. All I had left was a rather large pile of melted vinyl. Having known him (my future father in law) for years we both kind of chuckled in the end thinking about that stupid cat. They found the cause right away as the cable was rather large and obvious.
And yes, I have several other friends who have experienced fire, my youngest sister lost her house as well years ago. So I have to agree with you pjk.
Nov 18, 2008 07:53 pm That really does suck...scary to think that it could just happen.
dB...it needs to be asked...it wasn't THAT neighbor, was it?
Nov 18, 2008 09:45 pm I knew somebody would ask...no, it wasn't.
Nov 18, 2008 10:13 pm Did she....
Oh never mind.
Nov 19, 2008 06:39 am Wow, it turns out it was a spark, or short, from a hand tool they were using to build the new porch that was left plugged in or really hot a sparked, that start smoldering and eventually the fire.
From the front the house looks fine (other than windows and whatnot) but the inside, another neighbor said, is all blackened with soot and the back of the house is torched.
Very sad, my wife and some other neighbors are trying to figure out how to start a trust, or some volunteer labor pool or something to help out.
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