FIRE

Fire...it can one of three things...something of beauty, something to warm up next to on a cold day...or something very destructive.

With the first, fire can be like a dancer, swirling and moving from side to side with long arms with its reds and yellows. At hotter temperatures the flames can turn blue or even white adding more color to the mix. Through a telescope with a solar ring you can see flames hundreds of thousands of miles long flung out into empty space, or on a much smaller scale watch the single flame of a small candle move back and forth in a small breeze.

On a cold day fire can be something to get the blood going again back into the fingers, arms, face, and toes after you've been outside for an extended length of time. Sitting up next to a roaring fire in a fireplace while it's snowing outside can make one very comfortable.

But this story is about neither of the two. This is about a fire just this morning that had the makings of a disaster. At about 6:30 a fire chief from a neighboring county drove by the house you see in these pictures and saw giant flames roaring out of the back of the house. He quickly stopped his car and ran to the house and started banging on the doors and windows in case somebody was inside. In this case there were, a man and his teenage daughter. They got out of the house but only with what they were wearing and a guitar the girl had (the girl wasn't even able to get a pair of shoes and walked around in the yard barefoot. Firemen from Marengo and English, Indiana were both called to the scene. Because there was no nearby hydrants water had to be trucked in from two different directions.

This fire was a stubborn one. Because of some dangerous circumstances the firemen were unable to enter the structure. There was a danger of the roof collapsing, which also kept fireman from getting on top of the house the knock holes in the roof and allow the heat to vent out.

For two hours both fire departments pumped water from all four sides of the house and the roof. As the skies lightened overhead the damage was more easily seen. The inside of the house was gutted to the point there was little to salvage. Besides the severe fire damage itself the smoke and water damage was almost total. The house was insured so the family will be able to rebuild if they decide to. The best thing to come out of this was that there were no injuries. Had not this fire chief from almost 40 miles away stopped and alert the two inside this story would not have any kind of happy ending. The sun came up bright this morning.....in more ways than one.