- Joined
- Mar 19, 2005
- Messages
- 696
As most of you who have followed this forum for the last couple of years will have noticed, I do most of my misguided attempts at contributing to this forum at about three in the morning, when something is bothering me and I can’t sleep. Another one of those thankfully rare nights has raised its evil head and struck, so here I am. There has happened something that I think is worth sharing with you all and I have to give it a go.
About one thirty yesterday afternoon, I sat at the computer , upstairs in the office and there came a knock on the door downstairs. The lady from the packet delivery service had come and I had a packet from eBay to sign for. This happens often, and I have struck up a bit of a “Hi, how are you doing” with her. There was a bit of fog in the air outside and a strong stink of someone burning trash somewhere in town. This is a smell that I have smelled quite a number of times, and just one of those things you bitch about, and never actually complain to the person doing it. Life is that way in a small town where everybody lives so close together. Most won’t say anything to a neighbour, as no one needs a war in the neighbourhood. So we mentioned it and then we said goodbye and I said thanks and I went back to the computer.
About five minutes later, the fire alarms went off in town. I looked at the clock on Windows and saw that it was definitely not noon or sometime when there might be a test of the siren. The siren went off a couple more times and then it was time to go to the door and see what was up. I’m not a member of the volunteer fire department, but in the middle of the week, there just aren’t too many of the members around and home, so you have to see if you can help and take up the slack. I have never had to before.
Looked out the door and to the right, at the next house, stood the old man and the daughter. Her jumping up and down, crying and screaming and pointing into the courtyard. Him just standing and looking into the courtyard. I run towards them, look around the corner, and the shit had hit the fan. The back of the house area, the workshop, had flames coming out of the door. Not a word to be said at that time, so I run back into our house, into our courtyard and into the cellar and grab the rolled up hose, out to the spigot and connect fast, into the house and turn on the hose (its January, the water is off), and into the garage grab the ladder, out again, ladder against the shed wall, throw the hose up, climb up and get onto the neighbours garage roof and pull the hose up and from the roof start with the garden hose trying to douse the flames. There is naturally a space of 6 meters or so to spray over and I’m above the level of the door, so I can’t get too far into the building. One volunteer fireman has arrived, a young kid who had hooked up a hose somewhere in the street and he went to it too. His hose was too short and he couldn’t get to the door either and half the door was also closed with the biggest fire behind it. The water went on by past the flames to the other side of the room. The siren is still going, and it went for a good hour at least, but I didn’t have time to think about this. The lady from the pub was pulling hoses out that someone carried from the fire house down the street…the old man just stood and looked (shock) and the family went on screaming and the crowd grew. A number of towners took up tasks, the volunteers started to arrive, but the fire was spreading out of the range where we could have gotten it under control without help from the big boys. Too little water and too short hoses. Someone remembered to shut off the big liquid gas tank behind the house, parts of the workshop were falling out of the building, maybe thirty people were running about and a lot of just plain panic. The flames started to come out of the outside of the roof, behind where the building meets the other neighbours barn on the other side.
The fire was all going away from my house and instead in the other direction. The hose again was not long enough and me and another got into the fishpond there in the garden and started with buckets to throw water where the hose just couldn’t reach. Didn’t do a bit of good. I’m still at that point in my slippers and soaked up to the knees. More firemen arrived, in all 8 towns turned up and a good hundred firemen. The area where the workshop roof is attached to the main house started to have smoke billowing from the joint and the main house was so full of smoke that no one without a gas mask with an oxygen tank could have gone in there. We tried, but no go, closed the door again. The volunteers tried to get to the back of the house and spray from there, but that side was blocked by the next neighbours gate and they had to rip it apart and use chain saws to get in there. The courtyard there hadn’t been used in years, and had trees growing up in there, so they had to cut trees down to get into that barn, which had now started to burn too. The place was crawling with volunteers, mayors from the neighbouring towns, the police, the criminal police, and the rescue squad to take the old man away. He is still in intensive care by the way. This was just a nightmare.
They are still over there, at three, doing an all-night fire watch. The main house did not burn, but was filled with water and the floors have caved in in places, as they are built with clay and straw…the method of building when the house was built in the early 18 hundreds. Remains to be seen if the house can be saved. The workshop is a complete loss, the new motorbike in there is burned to a pile of metal…literally a pile, about 10 inches high. I offered any neighborly help I could, as one should. The young man whose bike it is somehow found the strength to laugh and ask if I would rebuild his bike for him.
I’m sure a few of you have wondered what this has to do in a Norton forum. There is though a point to all this.
There was no fire extinguisher in the shop.
Spend the twenty dollars and put one by the door on the wall.
About one thirty yesterday afternoon, I sat at the computer , upstairs in the office and there came a knock on the door downstairs. The lady from the packet delivery service had come and I had a packet from eBay to sign for. This happens often, and I have struck up a bit of a “Hi, how are you doing” with her. There was a bit of fog in the air outside and a strong stink of someone burning trash somewhere in town. This is a smell that I have smelled quite a number of times, and just one of those things you bitch about, and never actually complain to the person doing it. Life is that way in a small town where everybody lives so close together. Most won’t say anything to a neighbour, as no one needs a war in the neighbourhood. So we mentioned it and then we said goodbye and I said thanks and I went back to the computer.
About five minutes later, the fire alarms went off in town. I looked at the clock on Windows and saw that it was definitely not noon or sometime when there might be a test of the siren. The siren went off a couple more times and then it was time to go to the door and see what was up. I’m not a member of the volunteer fire department, but in the middle of the week, there just aren’t too many of the members around and home, so you have to see if you can help and take up the slack. I have never had to before.
Looked out the door and to the right, at the next house, stood the old man and the daughter. Her jumping up and down, crying and screaming and pointing into the courtyard. Him just standing and looking into the courtyard. I run towards them, look around the corner, and the shit had hit the fan. The back of the house area, the workshop, had flames coming out of the door. Not a word to be said at that time, so I run back into our house, into our courtyard and into the cellar and grab the rolled up hose, out to the spigot and connect fast, into the house and turn on the hose (its January, the water is off), and into the garage grab the ladder, out again, ladder against the shed wall, throw the hose up, climb up and get onto the neighbours garage roof and pull the hose up and from the roof start with the garden hose trying to douse the flames. There is naturally a space of 6 meters or so to spray over and I’m above the level of the door, so I can’t get too far into the building. One volunteer fireman has arrived, a young kid who had hooked up a hose somewhere in the street and he went to it too. His hose was too short and he couldn’t get to the door either and half the door was also closed with the biggest fire behind it. The water went on by past the flames to the other side of the room. The siren is still going, and it went for a good hour at least, but I didn’t have time to think about this. The lady from the pub was pulling hoses out that someone carried from the fire house down the street…the old man just stood and looked (shock) and the family went on screaming and the crowd grew. A number of towners took up tasks, the volunteers started to arrive, but the fire was spreading out of the range where we could have gotten it under control without help from the big boys. Too little water and too short hoses. Someone remembered to shut off the big liquid gas tank behind the house, parts of the workshop were falling out of the building, maybe thirty people were running about and a lot of just plain panic. The flames started to come out of the outside of the roof, behind where the building meets the other neighbours barn on the other side.
The fire was all going away from my house and instead in the other direction. The hose again was not long enough and me and another got into the fishpond there in the garden and started with buckets to throw water where the hose just couldn’t reach. Didn’t do a bit of good. I’m still at that point in my slippers and soaked up to the knees. More firemen arrived, in all 8 towns turned up and a good hundred firemen. The area where the workshop roof is attached to the main house started to have smoke billowing from the joint and the main house was so full of smoke that no one without a gas mask with an oxygen tank could have gone in there. We tried, but no go, closed the door again. The volunteers tried to get to the back of the house and spray from there, but that side was blocked by the next neighbours gate and they had to rip it apart and use chain saws to get in there. The courtyard there hadn’t been used in years, and had trees growing up in there, so they had to cut trees down to get into that barn, which had now started to burn too. The place was crawling with volunteers, mayors from the neighbouring towns, the police, the criminal police, and the rescue squad to take the old man away. He is still in intensive care by the way. This was just a nightmare.
They are still over there, at three, doing an all-night fire watch. The main house did not burn, but was filled with water and the floors have caved in in places, as they are built with clay and straw…the method of building when the house was built in the early 18 hundreds. Remains to be seen if the house can be saved. The workshop is a complete loss, the new motorbike in there is burned to a pile of metal…literally a pile, about 10 inches high. I offered any neighborly help I could, as one should. The young man whose bike it is somehow found the strength to laugh and ask if I would rebuild his bike for him.
I’m sure a few of you have wondered what this has to do in a Norton forum. There is though a point to all this.
There was no fire extinguisher in the shop.
Spend the twenty dollars and put one by the door on the wall.
