Fire

In July of 1977, we had a house fire. Ten at the time, I was just finished with 4th grade, and a girl in my grade, Helen, had a fire in her house that left her badly burned. She had not yet returned to school. Her sister, who was Ellen’s age, died in the fire because she hid under her bed. I didn’t sleep deeply in the months after Helen’s fire. I believe that is why I woke up the night our fire began.

I awoke to find a thin grey smoke filling the upper quarter of my bedroom at the top of the stairs. I went downstairs and found Mom asleep on the couch, and that she had fallen asleep with a cigarette burning, which had scorched the couch cushion. I woke mom up, and we moved the cushion against the wall by the top of the basement stairs, and Mom doused it with some water and asked me to turn on the fan in the kitchen window. Dad (who believes what he believes) had the fan pulling air out of the kitchen, rather than blowing in, because he felt that circulating the air was more cooling. In this case, it acted as an exhaust fan, and started to move the smoke out of the house.

Mom went back to sleep, on the other couch, and I went upstairs and back to bed.

I awoke again with a start, and now my room was filled to just above my bed with thick black smoke. Out the window, reflected in the siding of the neighbor’s house, I saw the huge orange flames in the room just below me. Even with the light on, it was like night. I moved to the side of Ellen’s bed, and tried to shake her awake. I was practically lifting her from the mattress and dropping her, I was so forceful. She did not wake up, so I ran to my father’s bedside and started to shake him and call to him that he had to wake up- he mumbled that what ever I wanted could wait till morning, and I screamed that this couldn’t wait till morning. And then he was awake enough to see we were in danger, told me to stay where I was, and raced out and down the stairs.

Now I could hear Ellen crying. After a short time, Dad was back, and scooped up Eddie, blankets and all, and brought him downstairs. He came back and took me to the top of the stairs and instructed me to go down the stairs and straight outside, to take a breath and to not stop, not look back, just go straight outside.

The smoke was hot and my lungs were burning with my breath held. It was disorienting to be unable to see anything through the smoke, and it was almost like the smoke was crushing in on me. Half-way down the stairs, I inhaled and felt myself choking on the foul filthy poisons filling the stairwell. I did not stop, and a moment later I was outside and able to breath. I stood in my pink baby-doll PJs by Eddie at the curbside and waited for the others.

Dad had Dee walk down, and carried out Ellen, and then went back inside to put out the fire. We still had not seen Mom.

The Hoerings were outside with us, and Linda went with Dee to pull the fire alarm. Mom emerged and we saw Dad as he stuck his head out the upstairs window, that he left open to let the smoke out. He was covered in soot. We all were. The firemen arrived, no lights, no siren, likely due to the high volume of false alarms at our box. They went in, Dad came out, got some O2, and declined going to the ER.

We children were all put into beds in the Hoering house and I fell into an exhausted sleep with no dreams.

When I woke up the next day, I was embarrassed to be in my baby dolls and so exposed, and slipped downstairs and out the backdoor, and slid into the kitchen of our house. The burnt smell was bad, but the blackened walls were awful. All the clothes in our closets smelled of smoke. The wall next to where the cushion burned was chopped open. The clean up was already underway.

Walls were washed, the laundry, bedding and curtains were cleaned, toys were cleaned or thrown away. Ellen’s beautiful doll in the green Spanish dress was one of the casualties. There was just no way to clean the delicate fabric.

After washing walls came painting them. Every room in the house was painted over the next four days. Dad replaced the wall that had been opened with axes by the firemen. The pressure was on… We were having Dad’s family over on the weekend and no sign of the fire could be left, or questions would be asked. So we washed and cleaned, from Tuesday to Saturday- and nobody knew. It was never discussed, it was like it never happened… but fire was something I now was truly afraid of- because I knew its power.