Just another day...or is it?

I woke up this morning thinking "Blah! Just another day sitting around waiting for this day to pass" (side note - I'm not normally like this. I just live in a small town for the moment with nothing to do. I'm not completely lazy.) I watched a little t.v, jumped online, made some pancakes. Just the usual things one does when bored, until my sister came home. I wanted to watch a movie and eat some pizza today and thought that would be my BIG DAY! My sister came home and we chatted for a bit then she went to take a shower. All the sudden my day got a bit more exciting (not to say this was exciting for the ones it happened to because it was sad) I heard a woman screaming outside knocking on people's doors "everyone get out, everyone get out" I ran out the door to see what was going on. To give a bit of background, I live in an apartment complex and my back door opens to the swimming pool and then beyond that about 50 feet there are more apartments. Ok back to story. I didn't see anyone getting hurt or whatever. I saw a cop car on the street next to my building but didn't think much of it since we get a lot of cops here. I walked a bit further and noticed smoke was coming from behind my building. I saw all these people standing around and put two and two together and ran back to my house and out my back door and yupe my fears were confirmed when I saw the apartment beyond the swimming pool engulfed in flames. It was VERY VERY scary to see. By this time my sister was with me and we thought the wind might blow the flames toward us so we grabbed some of our prized belongings and hauled them out to the car. We are a little overly cautious sometimes! But being not even 50 feet away with wind blowing I thought it was a good cautious. So after we sort of calmed down we went back outside and watched the brave firefighters do their magic. The fire was put out not 10 minutes later (but felt like years) but the firefighters stayed for a while longer making sure they put out all the hot spots. Everyone was standing around watching and hoping they could get back to their house soon. Unfornunatly most of those apartments have to be torn down due to water and fire damage.

This whole ordeal got me thinking. My first thought was, what if this happened to me? Would I be prepared? And as I went freaking out hauling my things to my car I noticed my "prized" possessions were my turtle and photography equipment. Now what does that say about me? I don't know, I guess I love those two things or just my photography stuff was very expensive and I couldn't imagine leaving a live being in a burning building. But there were so many things I wish I could have saved if this in fact had been my home on fire. So I have decided to document all of my belongings, whether big or small, and buy a fire safe. As well as buy a fire safe for all my family members for Christmas. I used to get annoyed at my fire detector going off all the time, but now I treasure it. My second thought was how amazing these firefighters are. If you have never seen a firefighter upclose and personal then you don't know how hard they work. I'm like the rest of you, I've seen them on t.v fighting a house fire or a field fire but I never really knew what they deal with. So I have vowed to give money everytime that boot comes around! They need to be paid more. Ok, that was my public service announcement for the day. Hehe!

One last note: I am sorry for the ones who lost everything to the fire in Cedar City.