Those Things Don't Really Happen

I am going to do a post out of order tonight. I am not quite caught up on my posts but I know if I don't write this tonight I won't remember all of the details! I know I haven't posted about them yet, but about 4 weeks ago we bought some chicks! We were keeping them in a chick coral in the rec room. We had it sitting in a plastic kiddie pool, complete with a heat lamp to keep them warm. (I will go back and post more about the babies later!) We are always out there checking on them and playing with them.

 Sometimes we find ourselves saying, "That will never happen to us" or "Oooh, I hope that doesn't happen at our house". Or what about, "Hm, I wonder I how I would react in a situation like that?". Unfortunately, Daniel and I got to find out how we would react in a stressful/emergency situation this morning!

Around 2am I got up to get Dia. After I put her back to bed I noticed a funny smell. I went in the kitchen and thought it smelled like someone had just made toast. I checked the toaster (I always leave it unplugged because I am scared of it somehow catching on fire!), the oven and then took a quick look around the whole kitchen. I didn't see anything weird so I went back to bed. I thought about telling Daniel but he was sleeping so peacefully that I decided to leave him alone. I am always waking him up telling him that I heard/saw/smelled something and 99% of the time it's nothing! Around 5, I was putting Dia back to bed again and I thought that the smell was a bit stronger. This whole thought process went through my head. It was something like this, "Hm...it still smells. Maybe someone is burning their fireplace. It's not cold enough for a fireplace. Why would someone be using a fireplace in the middle of the night?". Then for the second time I went back to sleep.

6:30am, Daniel got up and got in the shower. Shortly after he got up, Dia woke for the third time. I brought her in bed with me. Daniel showered and got dressed then went in the kitchen to put his shoes on and eat breakfast. I was half asleep snuggling and nursing my little baby. He smelled something funny. If you know Daniel, you know he has a very weak sense of smell. If he says he can smell something it must be very strong! He thought maybe it was one of the neighbor's houses. I hear the back door open then seconds later my quiet snuggling time was over and everything went crazy!

 Daniel is usually a very calm person so when he came running in the house and yelled 'Jenna!' I was immediately startled. We've been using this door alarm thing that I bought from Damsel in Defense (basically you put it up against the inside of the door so if someone tries to open it from the outside it sets the alarm off!) on the back door. My first thought when I heard him yell and an alarm going off was that someone was trying to break in! In my head I am imagining someone trying to break down the door with a gun and they are going to hurt all of us! A couple of seconds later he yells that the chicken are on fire and come help. What?!? I literally jumped out of bed, waking Dia up. I grabbed my phone and with trembling fingers called 911. While I was doing so I was saying to myself, I knew it! Why did I ignore the funny smell all night?! I was so so so incredibly mad at myself for not investigating more! Daniel had grabbed the kids beach/sand bucket and was filling it with water then running out to the rec room and pouring it on the fire! I think he did this 4 or 5 times. I tried to tell him not to go back out there because the smoke was pretty thick but he insisted that he could put it out. By the time I got off the phone with the dispatcher, all of the fire alarms in the house were going off (the back door was open and letting lots of smoke in). Addie eventually woke up and asked if there was a fire. We told her the chickens were on fire and she got really upset! I was actually surprised that she was crying because the chickens were dead and not because she was freaked out by the alarms and the fact that she woke up to chaos.

After Addie was up, Daniel told me to get some warmer clothes on and get the kids some shoes so that we could go stand outside the house. The smoke was getting kind of bad. We had to wake Johnny up (all morning he kept telling us it was too early!). By this point Daniel had black soot all over his face and shirt and around his eyes were a purply/red color. It seemed like forever before the firetruck finally came! Daniel was anxious because he had the fire almost out but had given up because the smoke was too bad. We noticed a police officer show up first. He told us to move the van. Daniel did a crazy, action movie type reverse move and backed it up. When we think about it now it's funny because he was moving crazy fast and the firemen were taking their sweet time! They pulled the truck in, got out, looked around. One of them asked the police officer which shed the fire was in (maybe he didn't notice that I, the homeowner was standing right there and he could have asked me?). Anyway, they went to check it out. I don't know exactly what they did. The flames were just about out so I think they finished it and did something to help with the smoke. A couple of them walked through the house and checked upstairs to make sure no damage was done anywhere else. My poor kids were sitting outside wrapped in blankets freezing the whole time! At one point I looked up and saw a women and her small child across the street watching. If we saw a fire truck pull up to our neighbors house we would watch too! I was glad we could be some one's entertainment for the morning!

One of the firemen took down our names and phone number. Another one asked if we wanted him to remove the chicken bodies so the kids didn't see them. We said yes please. We saw him scoop up one and we figured the other 5 were in there somewhere or they were so cooked that we just wouldn't see them. They scooped out the melted plastic kiddie pool that we were using to house the chickens, and they cut out the burnt carpet. They had placed a fan in the rec room and the house for a few minutes to help clear the smoke. After they packed those up, they were on their way out. I think they were here for maybe 30 minutes or so. The kids and I went back inside and sat in the living room.

I sent a text to my mom to let her know what was going on and the kids started playing. Daniel was outside. After a few minutes he came in holding a live chick! We were all so excited that one of them had survived! He ran it over to the newly built (and almost completed) chicken coop then went back in to see if there were anymore! We did see the fireman pull out only one dead one. He ended up finding 5 of the 6 chicks alive! They were hiding in a corner behind some tools! He said he went in there to look at stuff and he heard them cheep. We were all so happy! Addie is a little bit sad that it was her favorite one that didn't make it. Johnny is sad that the kiddie pool is destroyed.

I didn't see the flames. I didn't see much of the aftermath. I was scared to go in there. Daniel said there was black soot everywhere. On everything. A couple hours later I decided to be brave and go check it out. As soon as I walked in I saw how bad the smoke damage was. There were only a few things that were actually burned (the pool, the chicken feeder and water, Daniel's brother's air compressor and the chicken food). I was thinking it wouldn't be bad and was really grateful that nothing else was damaged. What I didn't expect was so much damage from the smoke! It covered everything in there! The kid's toys, our books, all of my craft stuff, my fabric and the walls! It was a bit overwhelming.

The rest of the day has been a blur. We contacted our insurance company, a contractor with a restoration service came out, we went out to lunch to get some fresh air before taking Addie to school, the babies took naps then we went to ballet and had dinner here. It has been a long and exhausting day. Tomorrow a cleaning crew is coming out to deep clean my kitchen and living room because of the smoke. Yay!

This week we are going to buy fire extinguishers and more (and maybe louder!) smoke detectors. Tomorrow starts the process of cleaning/remodeling the rec room. From what we were told, it needs to be gutted down to the studs and completely redone because the

 smoke damage is so bad.

Tonight I am grateful that it was not in the house. I am happy that Daniel was home. I am also glad he was the one that found the flames and not me because I think I would have freaked out more than he did (although the panic in his voice will probably be ingrained in my memory for awhile!). I am so.so.so happy that all of us are ok and that tonight we are able to sleep in our own home, even if it does smell like a campfire. :)

I had to get a picture of the fire engine because I knew I would be blogging about this!

Trying to stay warm!

The fire damage.

I took this 3 days ago. They are starting to get big and look like actual chickens! We had 2 Rhode Island Reds like this one. This one made it, the other was the only casualty.