New Year' s FIRE!!!

On New Year's morning, around 8 am, our neighbor (Nancy Cramsy- who I had never met before, but am forever grateful too) was out jogging and saw smoke, and a fire, next to our house and came and rang the doorbell about 10 times until Russ answered.

She said, "There is a fire next to your house!!!" Russ ran out there and sure enough, the garbage can that was holding our burnt out (or so we thought) fireworks from the night before, had burst into flame and completely burned to the ground along with everything in it!

Our blue recycling bin (like the one pictured above) was sitting right next to the black garbage can (same kind, different color) and also was completely incinerated. They were both stuffed to the brim, now they are GONE! Just a puddle of blue with some ashes and bottles (from the yummy Sprecher Soda the Stewarts sent us) and cans. Russ put out the flames with the hose and told Olivia and Chloe to go wake me up. Oh- It was the morning of Olivia's sleep over and we had 5 of her friends still at the house, all tucked in their sleeping bags, watching a movie and wondering why the house smelled like smoke.

Our wall does not usually have these pink scorch marks. I think it is from chemical smoke coming from the A/C unit as it burned. 

So... the girls come upstairs in my room and start hollering about smoke and I am half asleep and keep telling them to shhhhhhhh so they don't wake up daddy. They try and tell me it doesn't matter and I need to get up, but I shhhhh them again. Finally they yell, "Dad is awake! There has been a fire! Get up!" I flew out of bed and grabbed my bathrobe and went outside (in the FREEEEEEZING cold weather- seriously it has been in the low 30's!!!!) and there is Russ, hosing down the ashes and the side of our house. He says the fireworks must not have been out all the way, even though we stomped on them and broke the big ones apart. They re-lit or spontaneously combusted in the early morning and were still going when he got out there. He was NOT happy! 

To make matters worse, the fire had reached all the way up to his Christmas lights and melted/exploded three of them right on the strand. I called 911 and those wonderful Gilbert Fire Fighters came and checked out the house. Of course they brought 3 fire trucks and a cop car!!! Lights and sirens and everything!! Embarrassing!! The cop was so nice. Her name was Tara (and then a long Russian sounding last name) and she made Olivia's day. She was showing them her cool pepper spray and other equipment and telling the girls (who were all evacuated from the house and standing in the front yard wrapped in blankets) how they will have the coolest answer to the question, "What did you do on your Christmas vacation?" when they get back to school! 

This gate used to have wood slats in every one of those empty spaces. Now they are all burnt and gone except the top left charred piece, still hanging on. The other door of the gate is totally fine. Crazy. Other damage was, the tire to the trailer (which you see propped next to the ashes) the closest A/C unit, possibly the other one too. The wiring to the A/C unit, christmas lights, our tether ball pole tire, a bag of fertilizer, our rope golf game that Russ and Randy made years ago, and 

a nice black/gray scorch mark all up the side of the house.  Do you see the gray shadow right up behind the skeleton of a gate. (Russ put chicken wire behind it so the dogs can't get out). You can also see a bit of the other perfectly unharmed half of the RV gate.

The firemen had a cool sensor that they held at all different places outside, inside the garage, and in the attic that detects any hot spots or smoke. After about 30 minutes they decided there was no fires anywhere inside our walls or attic. PHEW!!!!! Thank you NANCY! Thank you Lord for Nancy and small miracles. The firemen also said that if the fire had decided to start in the middle of the night, when no one was out jogging, it very easily could have gone up into the vents above the scorch marks and caught the attic on fire pretty quickly, then we would have had a real big problem on our hands! Phew!

So, it was our first year with fireworks in AZ, hopefully it won't be our last. We definitely learned our lesson!!!