Imagine waking in the middle of the night hearing someone shouting, “The house is on fire!” There are few things more frightening and gut-wrenching than that. Fire is ravenous and unflinching. It destroys everything in its path without care or prejudice. In a flash, a lifetime of work and savings is gone, and in the most tragic cases, people lose their lives.
I’ve never lived through a house fire and can only imagine the devastation one must feel the next morning. It’s one of those events, like tornadoes and hurricanes, that bring neighbors together regardless of how well they knew each other before. No one wishes such horror upon someone else.