our house caught on fire

Last week our house caught on fire.............

I live at the beach house with my brother for the summer, but this weekend the house was pretty packed. My parents were here for the month, and my sister and niece had come down for the weekend, along with my sister's friend and her little girl. My brother was out of town for the weekend, so my sister's friend Gale, and her daughter Macy slept in my brother's room.

I went to bed early, I was extremely tired. I fell asleep at around 12:30 AM, which if you know my schedule is realllly early for me. At around 4 o'clock I woke up. I was wide awake for some reason. I was tired but was sitting up wide awake. I tried to get back to sleep. 4:20, I'm laying in my bed kind of still awake, and the fire alarm goes off. The fire alarm had gone off a few times earlier this summer because of the batteries. Sometimes it would go off in a minute by itself, or else we'd change a battery or something. So I layed there in bed for a second getting ready to get up and go see what battery needed to be changed. All of the sudden I hear, "SOMEBODY PLEASE HELP US, THERE'S A FIRE!!!!" It was Gale. I jump up from my bed and sprint down the hall. When I got to the room I could see it was filled with smoke. Macy, Gale's little girl was crying. My dad had gotten there just before me and was helping Gale put out the fire. A battery pack for a DVD player that was charging had overheated and exploded, and set on fire. It was real smoky but Gale had pretty much gotten the fire out. I went over to the window to open them up since the room was filled with smoke. All of the sudden there was a huge BANG! The other piece of the battery pack exploded and set off another fire that shot up about waist high and set the carpet on fire. I grabbed the blankets/mattresses and pulled them away from the fire so they didn't all set on fire. My mom yelled for me to call 911. I ran in the other room and grabbed the phone to call 911. I picked it up to dial and it says, "searching...". I hung it up and tried again, "searching...." WTF. For some reason the phone wasn't working. I sprint down the hall and grab my cell. I dial 911 and literally as soon as I finished saying our address to the operator I can hear sirens. Ridiculously fast response time. I run back in the room to see if my dad needed help with the fire but he'd kind of started to suffocate it when I went to call 911 and he'd been able to put whole thing out by the time I got back in, but we weren't sure if anything else was going to blow up or catch on fire, so we took the kids outside.

Luckily there wasn't another fire after that. The firemen came in with some sort of device to make sure nothing was hot behind any of the walls since some of the stuff that went shooting across the room from the battery pack could have gotten in a wall or something, and also the wiring could have been affected. The head fire guy stuck around for a while to take pictures, etc... After everyone finally cleared out, my dad and I spent the next 3-4 hours cleaning out the entire room. We had to move and clean everything since soot was everywhere. The damage could have been a lot worse, but the carpet was ruined and the wall was pretty messed up, so the carpet had to be replaced, walls painted, etc... The closet door actually had plastic from the battery pack that had shot over and melted onto the door. There were pieces of it all across the room. After we got done cleaning I blew my nose and soot came out.

It was around 9 am or so. I thought maybe I'd try and get a couple hours of sleep, but the adrenaline from the fire was still kind of going, so I figured I might stay up for the day. Nothing like a small house fire to start off the day. At some point while we were cleaning Macy wanted to come in and look again at the damage. Since we were in the middle of cleaning and there was still soot we didn't want her to walk around in there since she might get soot on track it around the house. She started walking in and I told her to wait a while.

Macy: "why"
Me: "we're cleaning in here"
Macy: "why are you cleaning"
Me: "because it's still dirty in here"
Macy: "why is it dirty"
Me: "because there was a fire, we're still cleaning it up in here. you can come check it out in a little while"
Macy: "why was there a fire"
Me: "because the battery pack exploded"
Macy: "why did it explode"
Me: "i dunno, good questions though, I like where you're head's at."
Macy(looking confused): "thanks"
and then she walks away.

Luckily no one got hurt. I was gonna send my brother a text message that said, "hope you're having a good time. p.s. your room caught on fire." My mom told me not to though since she thought he'd stress out.