Yesterday night, I was already laying in bed about to fall asleep, I heard some strange noises. At first I thought my pets are running around in the house they pumped into something. When I heard it a third time I got up to check on my pets. When I got up I realized there is a lot of light outside. At fist I figured it must be the police or ambulance, once I put on my glasses I saw the above. A house in my neighborhood was engulfed in flames and was about to collapse. I saw a car from the fire department that blocked the street but I didn’t see any actual fire truck, but they might have been hidden behind a house. Until I saw water actually flowing the home was almost burnt to the ground. Scary.
Scary fire in my Dale City Neighborhood
January 20, 2016 by
Scary fire in my Dale City Neighborhood
I have to confess things like this easily freak me out. But imagine how scary it is it only took a couple of minutes for the house to burn to the ground. I saw the fire department run to different hydrants to get water. They had a ladder and at one point sprayed water from the top to contain the fire, to avoid having is spread to the neighbors. Both neighbors homes were a little impacted on the side.
This morning this is what I woke up to:
The fire department and the Fire Marshals were on the scene all night long and this morning when I took my dog for a walk they were still there investigating the fire. I asked the Fire Marshal if everyone got out okay and he did say there were no fatalities only property damage. Thanks god.
I truly feel for this family, they went to bed in their own house and this morning there is nothing left of their home. Very scary.
When I saw how fast the fire destroyed this house my first thought of course was for the people that live in the home and my second thought was how can I make sure something like this doesn’t happen to my house.
I couldn’t sleep most of the night and did some research on fire safety.
The first thing I looked into are smoke detectors. Smoke detectors safe lives. Make sure you have working smoke and carbon monoxide detectors in your house. I contacted my security company last night for a free consultation to see if they can recommend improvements to smoke detectors in my house.
I also read up on sprinkle systems inside my home. Some newer homes are now built with sprinkler systems, which can avoid a disaster like you see in the above pictures. My house was built before builders added sprinkler systems and I am seriously considering adding a sprinkler system. Especially in the utility room as from my research it is not very expensive to adding a sprinkler in the utility room, not yet sure about the rest of the house, but trust me I will investigate. Based on some of my research sprinkler systems can be very effective of saving property and more important saving lives.