Fire

Approximately 20 years ago, I was personally touched by the urban blight of fire, when it destroyed my apartment and killed my girlfriend while I was away at work. I did not even know about the disaster until I came home from work and saw those ominous yellow plastic police tapes DO NOT CROSS warning signs around my apartment complex.

I had no clue anything was wrong until I got home. I started getting that whoa! feeling as I got closer. Why were all those people standing outside my house? Why was there yellow tape all over? What happened to my windows?

There was a gaping hole where the heat of the fire, estimated at well over a thousand degrees Fahrenheit had blown out my living room windows. A score of my neighbors stood outside silently and watched me as I pulled up.

I was stunned and shocked, and remember quite clearly the feeling of disbelief as I walked inside my apartment, which I had just left in perfect condition that morning to go to work. It had suddenly and inexplicably been transformed into a nightmare scene of devastation and desolation.

I can still hear the crunching of the broken glass as I walked across the water-soaked rug, examined the blown-out TV, and saw the scorched and burnt marks on all my furniture and possessions. and most especially I remember that horrible SMELL of the fire. It was imprinted, and will forever remain, in my brain, deeply ingrained in my memory forever.

The neighbors were all very sympathetic and told me that they thought that there had been a gas explosion, because of the intense heat that blew out the windows. And passers-by on the local commuter train, which ran right past my apartment, actually phoned in the 911 call to the Fire Department.

One of my neighbors I barely even knew before the fire stepped up and volunteered to keep my cat, who had been outside at the time of the fire, in her safekeeping while I dealt with the aftermath of the shock and found temporary housing since I was suddenly homeless.

She also eventually helped me find a new place, and shop for new furnishings, (thanks to money given to me by the Red Cross, which was extremely helpful, generous, and sympathetic) and she gave me continued emotional support. We became, and remain, to this day, best friends.

Some friends of mine from my job let me crash on their couch. Another friend helped me sort through what was saveable and transport it to a storage facility container. Other people, especially my bosses, were also extremely sympathetic and gave me all the time I needed to sort things out and get my life back together.

I will be forever grateful for the kindness and concern my friends extended to me in my hour of need. Even total strangers were concerned for and sympathetic to me. The strength of my community was never more evident.

I was walking by a local bar on my daily walk when I had a fire flashback a few days ago. On that day, I had been awakened by the horrible sounds of the fire engines racing to yet another fire. The sirens were loud, insistent, demanding, and compelling...just like they always are. Then they stopped.

This fire destroyed a local bar, blocks from my present apartment complex. A crowd of people and nearby residents crowded the sidewalk to watch as the brave fireman clambered up ladders to the roof of the buildings involved and began the grim task of putting out the fire and dousing and carrying out pieces of furniture to the street.

The good news was that nobody was hurt or killed in this bar fire, unlike in my own personal urban nightmare, where my girlfriend died from severe burns and smoke inhalation. The bar and a mom-and-pop grocery store next door were gutted, and clouds of black smoke hung in the air from the blaze.

Built in 1941, this bar was also a popular hangout for surfers, live bands, and local residents. The bar held annual events such as Christmas parties and traditional group “plunges” into the very chilly waters of San Francisco’s Ocean Beach every New Year’s Day.

Upon hearing the sirens that day I immediately got dressed and walked the few blocks down to the fire and once again I SMELLED and tasted that horrible, sickening odor of smoke, and saw and felt the horrible devastation.

Fire destroys everything in its path with a ravenous, insatiable, mindless hunger and it immediately brought back flashbacks, intense and horrifying memories of my own personal experience with fire.

Anybody who has ever experienced that pungent odor of burnt wood and furnishings will know exactly what I am talking about. It doesn’t matter where you live, it could happen to you.

They could be victims living deep in the woods whose homes or lives were destroyed by the raging wildfires that have devastated California during our current drought, or urban dwellers like me. We all were forced to endure the pain and shock, the brutal sense of loss, transformation, and disorientation.

Fire is a horrible, destructive force, and once unleashed, it requires immediate attention. I salute the bravery of the firefighters who routinely respond to such fires. These ravaging and raging infernos, be they commercial establishments that are utterly decimated, or the ones that totally destroy individual apartments or houses are always a living nightmare.

Firefighters literally risk their lives every time they respond to a fire, and they never know what the precise situation is, or how destructive an individual fire can be until they arrive. The bar was rebuilt and is doing better than ever now. I rejoice that there were no injuries or deaths involved.

But for me, the recurring nightmare of the sound of sirens wailing in the distance, then coming closer and closer, will always send me back, spiraling down the twisted torturous, Byzantine paths of memory and pain to my own personal experience with fire.

I sincerely hope everybody who reads this will take every precaution with fire safety in their own homes. And for the rest of my life, even though it was years ago now, whenever there is a fire, I will always carry with me the almost palpable taste of shock, disbelief, and the ineradicable odor, the SMELL of the fire. It is seared into my brain, and will never go away.

Fire transforms things, it utterly destroys them, in a matter of minutes, be they living human beings or inanimate objects. Fire turns them into something twisted and broken and beyond repair. It is a force of nature and can be contained but never fully controlled.

Fire is always out there lurking, ready to spring into its malevolent mode of destruction. I hate fires, and please remember nobody is inviolate, nobody is exempt from the destructive force of fire.

It can happen to anybody, it happened to me. Please don’t let it happen to you.