A long night...

On Monday night Mark and I awoke to the sound of sirens wailing close by.  

With the first set of sirens I was barely awake.  

For the second set of sirens I thought to myself, "there must be an accident somewhere close by."  

Then came the third set of sirens...  I hopped out of bed and went to the window to see if I could see anything just as the fourth set of sirens went wailing by.  I looked out the window and said "Oh my gosh!".  Then Mark jumped up to see what was going on.

  

Our street is shaped like a horseshoe and we are located at the bottom middle of the horseshoe, on a high spot so we can see almost all the houses all around us.

What we saw out the window was a HUGE fireball coming from a house about 8 houses down the street on the opposite side of the street.  The house was a two story one but the flames reached up at least another story.  There was smoke billowing past our house in huge clouds.  We could hear the sound of the water from the firefighters hitting the flames with a loud hissing sound and even the sound of the firefighters calling to each other.

It took the firefighters over an hour to put out the fire and then another couple hours to clean up.  It ended up being five firetrucks there to put out the fire.  The fire burned so hot that it caught both the neighbors houses on fire as well.  The house to the north was substantially damaged but the house to the south was fine.  Everyone was able to get out safely, no one was hurt which is something to be so thankful for.

The family that lived in this home was already staying somewhere else because of a house fire earlier in the day.  That one was started by their 4 year old son playing with a lighter on a mattress.  The firefighters determined that the mattress did not reignite but that the fire started somewhere else in the house.  They are still investigating what caused the fire, they suspect arson or something along those lines.  The fire investigation unit has been at the house for the past few days but we haven't heard anything yet.