The local news hit a little too close to home today, or perhaps I should say, too close to my brother’s home. This story tells of four Dallas homes ravaged by fire, two of them completely destroyed. They sit in a row on the street directly behind where Peter, Katie, and our two sweet little nieces live. The backyards of the homes that burned back up to my brother and sis-in-law’s backyard. They told me they awoke at 4am this morning to see the house behind them engulfed in flames. How terrifying.
Tonight we are thankful that no one appears to have been injured in this three alarm fire, and that the flames did not encroach onto my brother’s family’s property. It was a sobering sight to drive by the scene of the fire today and see the devastation that can be wrought in just a couple hours’ time. May God comfort those families who have lost much in this disaster, and give them the means and support to rebuild and recover.
I must have been pretty groggy, because it was daybreak (after spending an hour at my back fence, hosing down everything including the burning house across the alley) before I realized that — like Daniel’s companions — I didn’t even have the smell of smoke on me. Of course I hadn’t been in a furnace at the time, but I was thankful just the same.
Also, if you don’t have one of these, I highly recommend it. You can shoot water across an alley, 15ft of yard, and halfway up your neighbor’s roof with that thing.