Neighborhood Fire

August 24, 2017

This is not a fun post to write, but it's a memory we will have forever.

At 3am, we woke to what sounded like a bomb exploding in our back yard. We jumped out of bed and ran into the living room to see what had happened. Then we heard another blast. It's hard to describe how loud the explosions were.  At first, we thought the tree in the front yard had fallen on the house, but after looking out the front door, we saw the tree standing. Then we thought Camp Pendleton might have mistakenly dropped a bomb on our neighborhood, or worse yet, North Korea had started a war in our backyard. Seeing nothing out front, we ran into the backyard.

Brandon got outside first and all I heard was "OOHHHH NOOO". What , What? As I jumped off the step into the yard, I saw flames rising into the sky, with embers falling everywhere, including in our backyard. It appeared that our neighbor's house behind us was on fire, and risking our house from catching fire too.  Brandon began running around, pulling flammable items away from the house to make sure the embers didn't land and bring the fire onto our house. He pulled the umbrella, dog beds, and other stuff we had inside or as far from the house as he could.

I immediately ran inside to get Owen. I opened the door and Owen was standing in his crib, reaching out to me and crying "mommy!" Because the fire was behind the house and Owen's windows face that direction, his entire room was filled with an orange glowing light. It looked like Owen was in a burning room. I will never, ever, forget that moment. So scary!

I grabbed Owen and we ran outside to tell our friend Chelsea in our studio about the fire. "Chelsea, there's a fire. Wake up" She opened the door and saw the flames over the roof of our house. "OMG, is everyone ok? What can I do?" I love that her first response to the emergency was asking how she could help. She held Owen while I ran inside and got my wallet and our safe into the car.  We drove away and up the street to Grandma and Grandpa Mehlberg's house.

Brandon stayed at the house and was getting ready to wet the roof of the house when the fire trucks arrived at the burning house. They had the fire contained and under control really quickly.  Smoke filled the neighborhood and Brandon had to shut all the windows of the house. There were ashes everywhere, but luckily only a few things in our backyard had burn marks or melted from embers.

It turned out that the fire was a few houses away on the street behind us, about 200 feet from our backyard. Our understanding is that the homeowners were doing construction on a retaining wall in the front of their house, and unknowingly hit a gas line. The gas filled their garage overnight, and when they woke up early to take a shower, the pilot light on the water heater ignited the gas filled garage. In essence, the entire garage was one big bomb, blowing the garage door clear across the street into the neighbors house. The couple in the house tried to exit the front door, but were blocked by the flames, so they exited through the back of their house with their two dogs. One of dogs went missing, only to be found hours later running scared through the neighborhood. The fire was limited to the main house and the homes on both sides of it.  Very lucky! No one was hurt.