To the Maple Grove Fire Department: Heartfelt thanks for your heroism tonight.

My neighbors across the street lost their home to a devastating fire early this morning. As my husband, my daughter, and I stood outside, watching the fire rage, more and more neighbors stumbled out of their doorways (most in their pajamas), my daughter said, as she often does, precisely what I was thinking: “I always see this on TV, people standing around watching a fire burn, and wonder, ‘Why are they doing that?’, but now that I’m standing here, I think I understand it–it’s so terrible, so awful, but I can’t stop looking at it.”

So terrible, so awful, indeed.

I have a terrible cold, and had taken 2 Nyquil before going to bed. Normally, I’m a very light sleeper, but I heard nothing. What awakened me was that I was having trouble breathing from my cold and my throat was aching, so I got up to get a drink and try to clear my head.

In the bathroom, I could see colored lights flickering on the blinds, and hear voices yelling outside. For a moment, I thought I was hallucinating (did someone put LSD in my Nyquil?), but when I peeked through the blinds, I could see emergency lights flashing in front of my house.

I raced down the stairs and looked out the front window: the house across the street was engulfed in flames. There were fire engines and police cars scattered everywhere; the street looked as though a giant had been playing Rescue Heroes and had left his toys where they lay. My hands flew to my mouth in horror, and I raced back upstairs to our bedroom and woke up my husband.

“Eric! Wake up! The neighbors’ house is burning! It’s burning!”

He sprang out of bed and followed me downstairs. The two of us stepped outside to find out what was going on. Terror was gripping my heart as I searched the darkened silhouettes of the “civilians” wandering the sidewalks watching or huddled in silent, stricken groups on the corners. Were they okay? Had they gotten out in time? Thankfully, we found out almost immediately that the family was safe, and that the fire department had also evacuated contiguous neighbors for safety.

But I couldn’t tear my eyes away from the flames. They were so terrible, so much brighter and fiercer than anything I could possibly have imagined–and so incredibly swift. Within minutes, the peaked structures of the roof were gone; the windows of the ground floor of the home were flaring a blinding, bright blue–an unearthly light I’d never seen before which left me shaking in my slippers.

We, the neighbors, watched helplessly as the firefighters battled the blaze, and shared bits and pieces of knowledge we’d managed to glean from others, trying to answer the questions that were racing through all of our minds: Was the family safe–always the first question asked by newcomers joining the huddles. How did this happen? What started it? Did their fire alarms wake them? Do they need anything–blankets, clothes, a place to shower or stay?  What can we do to help?

The smoke was thick and viscous–almost a living entity itself, somehow separate from the fire. Even now I can smell it on my clothes, my hair.

I was worried about our two sons, soundly sleeping in their bedrooms–not that they were in danger, because they weren’t at any time, thank God–but I was worried that if they awakened alone in our house, if they heard the sirens and the firefighters’ yells, saw their windows glowing orange and yellow from the flames across the street, noticed the flickering red and blue lights flashing patterns across their ceilings, I was worried that they would be afraid. I entered their bedrooms repeatedly, trying to resist the urge to pick them up and carry them out in my arms–knowing that if they could sleep through this horrible sight, they should, but needing to wrap them in my arms and feel them safe there.

A news camera arrived on the scene and began interviewing neighbors; I slid back into the house, not wanting any part of that. I was ashamed of myself that I could not turn away from the scene, and yet, I watched, still.

I walked down the street a ways with some other neighbors who had told me that the wetlands and the back of the burning home were ablaze, but the smoke struck me in the face, making it impossible to breathe. As I covered my mouth and nose with the collar of my sweatshirt and turned back, I thought God, what the firefighters must be enduring. What the family must have gone through to get out.

I saw a new neighbor I did not recognize taking video and pictures with his cell phone. I was repulsed, even as I was thinking about doing so myself. What was the matter with me? Why didn’t I just go back inside?

Because there, but for the grace of God, go we.

That’s really what I think it was, at least for me. I looked at the front of their house, so like my own (the houses in our neighborhood all have a distinctive similarity somehow, even though we all try to put our own stamps on them and proudly tout the names of the different house styles); I saw the flames in the front window and saw my own office, burning.

I looked at the second floor bedroom window, sheets of fire whipping up through the roof, and pictured my daughter’s room engulfed in that terror.

I thought of my neighbors’ panicked flight through a darkened, smoke-filled house–Do you have the girls? Where is the dog? Where do we go?–and I could so easily imagine it being me.

I think that is why I stayed, why I watched, and why I feel compelled to write about it now. It was so close, so very close, and so terrible, and my heart aches so deeply and ferociously for their loss, even as I breathe deep sighs of relief for them that they did not lose more than they have.

It is growing lighter now, and I just looked out of my office window, from which I have a clear view of the sun beginning to rise. I remember, when we first moved into our house, that the homes across the street had not yet been built. For those first few months, I would rise early and watch the sun come up over the wetlands, and I complained as the frames for those houses went up and eventually blotted out the sunrise.

This morning, I can see the sunrise creeping over the horizon again, see a wan sun beginning to rise through those blackened, smoldering beams that are all that is left of the second level. I wonder if, when the sun rises, it will seem as bright as the fire did earlier.

My heart feels heavy with guilt–guilt that I watched;  guilt that I could do nothing to help, just stand by and watch a whole lifetime of memories vanish into the smoky sky; guilt that my house is still intact; guilt that I am writing about it all.

I know that I was not alone in watching–our whole neighborhood did. And when we finally returned to the house, I looked out the back windows of my house, and in the darkness, could see in each of my neighbor’s houses down the street, a light on in every house. We were all awake, we were all shaken.

Because there, but for the grace of God, were we.

This is a great neighborhood we live in–I know that in the morning, we will pull together to make sure that all that is needed is provided. I am sure there will be clothes, meals, transportation–assistance in all ways large and small. It’s just the kind of neighborhood it is.

But for now, before the sun is fully up, I am guilt personified.

Friday, April 2, 2010