Well, last night was a night of little sleep--and for good reason.
The neighbor house (a duplex) across the street caught fire about 3:30 this morning. Nine fire trucks showed up with sirens blaring and lights blazing. One side of the duplex is rented by an older gentleman who keeps to himself, the other by an older invalid woman and her daughter (early 20's) who takes care of her. The daughter will often stop and chat and play with the dogs. So there was much watching to make certain there were no stretchers being carried out of the house, y'know?
Turns out the fire was in the shared basement storage area. Thoughts are that it was electrical in origin and the wall separating the houses is pretty much gone because the fire got into it. No lives were harmed, but the basement is pretty much gutted. They're still waiting to see if the support beams of the house (wooden) were compromised or not. If these folks have to move out, it's going to be a royal PITA since it's a HUD rental and they don't have much to live on, so I doubt they have any renter's insurance to cover such costs.
Having been through a house fire myself (1996), I can emphasize greatly with what they're going through. Not fun, but certainly does put lots of things into perspective, y'know?
What was crazy was that in the middle of the night DF woke up smelling something but I didn't, when we saw the news this morning we figured it had to be that he was smelling.
