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February 11, 2004

Stack Fire Revisited

These comments on my blog from this morning were waiting for me when I got home from Wasilla tonight:

That sounds very scary. You make it sound like it’s just a normal event of life in Alaska. Maybe so, I dunno. I am glad you’re ok.
Posted 2/10/2004 at 11:23 AM by maggie_mcfrenzie

That does sound scary. Thankfully, you’re ok.
Posted 2/10/2004 at 1:56 PM by spinksy

its a good thing that you all have a handle on things like that….
Posted 2/10/2004 at 2:30 PM by shedragon

Maggie, if getting scared would help, I’d have been scared to death. It was a real emergency. In such cases, a cool head rules. Greyfox mentioned after the fire died down and the danger passed that he’d been thinking of Dan Blythe, our latest neighbor to lose his home to fire. It is far too common an event around here, a result of the combination of extreme cold weather and hazardous heating fuels: wood, coal and oil. Almost every winter at least one family in this immediate neighborhood is burned out. The causes are many, and creosote is a common one.

On the subject of getting scared, the time our ceiling caught on fire from a superheated stovepipe, two of our cats ran outside as soon as I opened the door to let out the smoke. The third one hid under the bed. If the house had burned down, she would have died. In that event, it would have been fear, panicked reaction to fear, that killed her. I have always tried to respond to scary situations effectively, and have tried to teach Doug the same strategies. When we get scared, we think first and then get busy responding.

I’m glad we’re okay, too. It was Doug’s quick thinking and his awareness of the situation that kept the emergency from becoming a catastrophe. There are times when his propensity for staying up all night and sleeping at odd hours can be inconvenient. Most of the time it is good to have someone manning the nightwatch, keeping the fire fueled and under control. In the absence of thermostatically controlled central heating, we have a nightowl video game addict–one with the knack for field expediency (grabbing a nearby plant mister to put out a fire is a fine example of that classic military virtue). That works for me.