Tw: fire, mild gore
A house that lived across my street blew up a few weeks ago.
I still don't know if it was from a kitchen fire or a gas leak, but I remember slowly waking up that morning to the sound of a massive BANG right from outside. I automatically assumed it was a gunshot (I live near the woods and people go hunting around here occasionally) or some machine work being done, but only mere seconds afterward, my mother came thundering up the stairs and bursted into my room.
"OUR NEIGHBOR'S HOUSE IS ON FIRE"
Immediately, I rushed over to my front window to watch everything unfold. I sat there for nearly two hours, along with my younger sister, and watched in disbelief as the blazing fire spread from one house to two others. It probably sounds insane that it even got to that point, but our firefighters really took their sweet ass time. There was no running, yelling, or trying to aid people to safety. Just casual conversations and walking. What made it even worse is that our town only has one hydrant...
And our town's water systems were turned off.
And it would take a whole thirty minutes to turn them back on again.
Even worse than that was that one of the houses it spread to had several gas tanks inside. My dad was able to charge inside and get them out before the fire could touch them, but it left me with another thing to grapple with on top of everything else; my block could've so easily blown up all together, and I would've been taken along with it. And I wasn't saved from the aid of professionals or the people hired to protect me, but from my dad remembering something at the last minute.
But undoubtedly worse than any of that was the state the lady living in the burning house was in.
I wasn't able to see it first-hand, but the poor woman had third degree burns all across her body, and some of her hair was burnt completely black. She came out of that house screaming and crying in French, all while desperately praying to god for her survival. She was aided by her husband, but he was in way too much shock to know what to do. A neighbor brought her into her house, where he tried to help her by washing her burnt skin with a cloth and some cold water...but it caused her flesh to come clean off. And then he ripped a watch that was seared into her clean off...along with some chunks of her wrist. All of this happened while the neighbor (and him too eventually) liesurely had a coffee, resigning and decided that there was nothing either of them could do.
She was left there, lying on a hot couch, in unqualified hands and in agony, for a straight hour until the ambulance showed up.
Me and my sister felt safe up in my room, because even as the fire was getting worse, we knew that we were seperated pretty far from it by the road. It was easy for us to criticize and poke fun at the firefighters (who were volunteers....by the way) for their frustrating lack of urgency and incompetance, but once our mom told us about what happened to that poor lady, we were left in a deep shock. We tried to move on from the whole thing, but I felt shaken for the remainder of the day. I just hated everything, from how casually a goddamn house fire was treated, how close everyone else and I were to death, and definitely most of all, how the burn victim was handled. I wouldn't say I was traumatized (because if anyone was traumatized, it'd be the victim. My god.), but the whole ordeal haunted me so much, and I couldn't shake off the dread of knowing that I live in a place where a deadly situation I'm in could be made even worse due to negligence. I kept imagining if it was me in that fire, as firefighters stand by completely dumbfounded, and people tear my body apart in a vein attempt to help me.
Other than that, nothing much has happened to me since the start of the year. I hate the I haven't been able to write diary entries consistantly I originally wanted to. My life really is just that slow.
One good thing that did happen to me though was that I finally established myself at the pride meeting in town. I thought they were just going to ignore me, since I was quiet and they didn't have much to discuss, but one of the leaders called upon me and asked me to talk about myself. I told them that I lived out of town and that I hadn't been able to show up consistantly due to the driving distance.
Without even knowing me, several people offered to give me rides whenever I needed one, both to and back. It caught me off-guard considering how quickly they agreed to help me, but I couldn't be happier. I haven't shown up to another meeting/planned event yet, but...
It really is so nice to be in contact with such kind people.