On the Home Front
Submitted by Amy Barnes on Sat, 04/18/2009 - 9:18am.
Your fearless publisher lives in Denver, Colorado. On Friday, April 17, we were covered under about 8 inches of snow. I'm sure the mountains just to the west of us got completely buried. It's rather late to have this much snow. It is heavy and wet--really more like piles of slush when walking through it. Right now, it's raining on top of yesterday's snowfall. What a mess!
So, last night, the family got cuddled up in the lounge room, ready to watch Johnny Depp in Pirates of the Carribean 2: Dead Man's Chest. We settled in, watching the antics of these fearless pirates, as one of them creeped across the beach and then into the jungle of some lost island. Slowly, Will Turner (Orlando Bloom) followed a vine that was attached to a bottle he recognized. Suddenly, out of the shadows...
And our house shook.
No, seriously, our HOUSE. SHOOK. I almost jumped out of my skin.
"What the FUCK was that!" I yelled, right at the same time as my husband. I don't know that I've ever felt that much adrenaline. When I say the house shook, it was like the wall had pushed me forward, almost out of my seat. I ran to the front door to see what had happened. My husband found my cell phone first, and threw it to me across the room, saying, "Call 911."
I did so, and was immediately on hold. I opened the front door and did hear sirens in the near distance, but in an urban area, who can tell if they are going to the correct place? I finally talked to the dispatcher, who asked, upon hearing my address, "Did you hear an explosion?"
"Yes!" I said, "It shook our whole house!"
She assured me that help was on the way already, asked if we were safe, and told me where it had happened. It was only 4 blocks away! We tried to settle down and watch our movie--the adrenaline took a while to process out of my body. After the movie, my husband checked the news online, and it was reported that a house had exploded.
A house had exploded! No injuries, and no big report, either. Note how small that report is.
I'm still flabbergasted. I think I'll walk the dog down that way this morning and have a look.
- Amy Barnes's blog
- Login or register to post comments
Scary
Wow. Do you know what happened? A similar thing happened to me when I heard a loud thud and scuffel on my rooftoop. Turned out someone broke into another apartment 2 buildings down and was jumping the fence on my roof to escape. Fuckin' scary. Called 911. The police came quick, bu the thieves were long gone. I'm getting some new locks for my window.
All we know is that an
All we know is that an abandoned house exploded. The firefighters said there was a "gas leak." All I can figure is that the folks turned the thermostat all the way down, but maybe didn't turn the furnace off all the way. That night it was cold and snowing, and maybe the furnace kicked on, even with the thermostat all the way down.
Or maybe someone drove by and threw a cigarette out the window. We don't really know. I walked by there the next day, and it was a spectacular pile of rubble.