Well here is our story. Last night Eden had a girl friend stay the night. They wanted to go up to the attic and hang out, so we let them. Noah went up with them and they talked him into getting the space heater from his room.
Flash to this morning. After getting up and starting coffee, I took Patches the dog for a walk to go to the bathroom. As we returned and entered the building I thoght I smelled a burnt plastic smell. When I got up to our flat I was sure I smelled something. It wasn't coming from any of the other flats. Right then I remembered that the kids were in the attic last night. I ran up there to check if the smell was coming from there. When I opened the door a wall of heat and thick smoke was in the air. We had a fire somewhere! I couldn't see a thing because the smoke was to thick, so I ran down stairs to grab a flash light. Running into the house I yelled "Paula, theres a fire! Where's the flash light? We have a fire up stairs!" Then I ran back up with the flash light.
As I rounded the corner to the attic again the smoke was heavier than before. I could hardly see a thing in there. I took a deep breath and plunged in to see what was burning. As I entered I could see that the area where the bed was was glowing orange through the smoke. We had a fire about three feet by three feet burning in it. My heart exploded and my mind whirled. We were going to burn to the ground was my first thought, then I thought I've got to put this out. There were people in the building. We had to call the Bombieros, the Fire Dept. I turned to run back down stairs and remembered that opening a door can feed a fire. So I shut the door.
When I got back down to the flat Paula, Eden, Noah, Deni, the cat and the two dogs were headed out. I grabbed my phone and tried to call the Bombieros but the number didn't work. I figured out later that I had dialed the wrong number. The emergency number here in Portugal is 112 not 911 and I think I dialed 211. Anyhow lucky for me that our friends down stairs at the photo copy shop called.
I ran down stairs to see if Antonio, the owner of the photo shop, had a fire extinguisher and he did. I ran back up to the attic trying to pull the pin from the extinguisher. It was not so easy. I stopped and banged the thing out and then took a breath to head in and hit the bed with a blast from the extinguisher.I was probably pretty careless, because I just threw the door open and rushed in. The smoke was so thick I couldn't see my hand infront of my face. I couldn't even see the fire. But I knew where the bed was and I hit it with the chemical fire extiguisher. The heat rushed up and the smoke burned my eye, but I knew that I had blasted the fire from the hissing sound.
Now however my chest felt like it was going to explode becuase I had been running up and down stairs and my heart was pumping adrinalie into my system in huge doses. I needed air. I had to get out of there. I turned to go and it was almost as black behind me as in front. Just a slight yellow glow from the light coming through the door. I need clean air, not this putrid plastic smelling smoke. I bolted for the door and the smoke poured out with me. I could barely see from all the smoke. Even the stairs were heavy with smoke to the point where it was hard to see. But there was a small window where I could stick my face out. I jammed my face to the opening and blew the stale air from my lungs sucking back mostly clean air. And then I cried out to Jesus for help with this. I was scared and all I could imagine was the whole building consumed in an inferno.
From the window I could see the Bombieros pulling up infront of the house. I headed down and found my self standing in the rain as swarms of voulunteer fire fighters buzzed up and down the stairs to save the day. It was cold. My neighbors were kind. I was lucky and so blessed that we were all safe. My wife, the little girl staying the night, our kids, and the pets. All safe. No matter what was lost, the important things were safe.
In the end the attic was messed up really badly. The bed was gone. The walls were covered in soot. The hall and attic stink like burnt plastic. Our landlords couch was ruined and proably most of the stuff up there will need to be gotten rid of. But on the other had we were so protected. Our house is completely smoke free and liveable. You would never know that there was a fire right above us. And there was very little up in the attic that was a great value, so thank you Jesus.
I've put some picture below for you viewing pleasure. Be Blessed
This is the view towards the door way. That's Terri, Zephne' and Paula looking at the damage. We have a great community of belivers who showed up to see if there was anything they could do for us.
That was a bed. We've had a number of guest stay the night there. The feathers were a blanket.
More bed, blankets, and burned up furniture.
I look like a coal miner because of running in and out of the attic trying to put out the fire.
This morning I was thinking about what we had talked about and shared at our Matrix Christmas Feast last night. Scott encouraged us all to keep Jesus in the center of our Christmas season. A great reminder. We had a fun Christmas feast of eating and drinking that many believers have partaken of, in some fashion, for most of our lives. During the reading of the Christmas story I was reminded that our savior was born into a lower status household. That He was not a person of wealth, or power. And that He truly was an alien in a foriegn land. So this morning when I was reading through Zechariah chapter 7 and I came across this, it struck me pretty powerfully;
