June 26 was the day of our fire. We were set to go camping on Friday to go to a family reunion, get family pictures taken, and visit family down south. On Wednesday Mark turned on the fridge to cool it down before we set off on our trip. Nothing out of the ordinary.
We sold our old trailer just 6 weeks before. This new one was "perfect" for us. It had a real bed up front, (instead of just a fold out couch) bunks, a huge bathroom, and a nice big space for baby girl's pack n play.
Both mine and Mark's mom were visiting so we went to dinner on Wednesday night. Mark and I both got a call at the exact same time right when we were about to get out of the truck and go into the restaurant. Our trailer was on fire they said. So we rushed back as soon as we could. Smoke could be seen from where we were 4 miles away. When we got back to our neighborhood hundreds of cars were lined up coming out of our neighborhood. (We live in a dead end with a whole bunch of cul-de-sacs and there is one way in and one way out.) Why were all of the cars leaving?! Was our house on fire? Was the neighborhood being evacuated?! NO--just people following the fire trucks... WHO DOES THAT!? The fire department had a hard time getting in due to all of the fire chases and gawkers. It already took them 15 yes FIFTEEN minutes to get to our house! And then the fire hydrant on our property didn't work. (You can see it in the last pic) Then their pump on the truck didn't work. So they needed backup from another dept... I'm just glad I wasn't standing their watching, helpless the whole time because this is what we found when we got home.
Even though it was so devastating I couldn't help but think of the many ways that we were so blessed! The trailer is parked in the backyard 99% of the time, and usually we would have moved it out to the street the next day. But there was a broken sprinkler pipe directly under the trailer that Mark felt like he HAD to fix. I was somewhat annoyed because I wanted to go to other stuff, but I didn't say anything to him and he pulled the trailer out so he could fix the pipe. He needed to run to CAL Ranch to buy a part for the sprinkler and when he was walking out the door he told me to plug the trailer into the extension cord in the garage so it had power. I said OK even though I felt to lazy to go do it. Then he turned around and said never mind--we can do it later. I was relieved because it was less work for me to do...
There were just so many things that had to happen to ensure we were kept safe! The trailer caught on fire less than 2 hours of being pulled out of our backyard! If it were in our backyard our house surely would not be standing and we would have sifted through the ashes of our house instead of the ashes of our trailer.
There are just so many what ifs. What if we didn't replace our wooden fence last spring--would it have caught the fence on fire and spread to the house and other houses? What if we didn't have a broken sprinkler pipe? What if the trailer had caught on fire in the backyard--In the middle of the night--Under Brooklyn's bedroom window? What if it caught on fire while we were camping over the weekend? What if we were sleeping in it? Would we have gotten out? What if I had plugged it into the garage--would it have spread there too? We filled up the 2 huge propane tanks the week before. What if they had exploded? (They were untouched and even open!) I know can't focus on all of those what ifs, but just thinking about all that could have been makes me feel extremely grateful for what was. We were definitely protected.
We are still in the process of working with the insurance to get everything taken care of. It is such a headache. Our fence is replaced but we're still working on getting new siding on our house. The picket fence has been taken down. The tree has been trimmed of the branches that were scorched. The grass has grown in even greener than before, and the debris is all cleared. Even our street with the evidence of melted aluminum in the asphalt have been repaved this week. Pretty soon it will seem as if nothing had ever happened here. Which in a way makes me feel.. I don't know. In a few years this will just be a memory. And in 20 years no one will know what happened here. I don't know where I'm going with this, but it's just so surreal.
Here is a picture a neighbor took of our trailer while it was on fire.
And the last memories we have of our trailer.
I am so thankful for my family. We are safe and all I could do that whole night was hold my baby girl close. We have her and we have each other and that is really all that matters in life. Everything else is just stuff.
