Welcome to Day Zero - Well, Not Techncially

Hello those in the blogosphere! This is my very FIRST blog entry!

I am starting this blog as the direct result of a house fire that occurred on Tuesday, April 7th at approximately 9:20 AM. Yeah, that SUCKS, doesn't it -right before Easter and all (btw, happy Easter to all, Christians and chocolate bunny lovers included).

I'll start with what I call "day zero" which is when my family's life went from 60 to 0 (as opposed to 0 to 60) inside of only a few minutes. To begin how the author of a cheezy detective novel might,

It was a day like any other day...

In my case, that is absolutely true. I was upstairs getting dressed for work. As always, I was listening to Mike and Mike in the Morning on ESPN Radio (1250 AM in Pittsburgh). I got dressed, went downstairs, put my coat on, XOXO'd the wife and son goodbye, and went outside to clear the freakin' SNOW off of my car (I was hoping that we were done with that; damn that groundhog).

I was outside clearing the snow (listening to Mike and Mike again) and I hear my wife screaming something out of the front door. I asked her what she had said and she stated "THERE'S A FIRE IN THE HOUSE!" From that point on, time started to slow down more and more (like in the movies, I guess). I ran inside and had a straight line to our kitchen which was starting to fill with smoke. At this point, I hadn't seen any fire, but you know the saying: "Where there's smoke, there's fire." In about more 30 seconds, I did see the glowing light of flames coming from the little "cubby" that is situated between the kitchen, basement, and den (you know, that small bit of space for which there's absolutely no utility except for piling a bunch of crap that you haven't decided what to do with?)

It was then clear to me that there was absolutely nothing we could do. Ironically, I guess, we had a kitchen fire extinguisher, but I had no FREAKING idea where it was!

TIP:If you have fire extinguishers, FOR GOODNESS SAKE, PLEASE PUT THEM IN PLACES WHERE YOU CAN EASILY AND QUICKLY ACCESS THEM if necessary!

We hot-footed (pun intended) it out of the house (my wife and son both have asthma and the LAST place they need to be is inside of a burning house). Now, every second that passed as we waited for the fire crews (two different companies responded as well as EMTs) seemed to take a lifetime. All I kept thinking was "where the F%*K are the firemen!" Much of my poor wife's thoughts centered around "oh my God, what about all of the things we had for Easter for our son!" We were safe and obviously that was key.

ALL OF THIS TOOK PLACE WITHIN THE SPAN OF ABOUT 10 MINUTES!

The firemen had arrived and did their thing -quite superbly I might mention. Out came the firemen putting on their equipment and grabbing axes and a 4 INCH HOSE to go into the house and put out the fire. My family and I were next door at a neighbor's house.

QUICK ASIDE: If you are lucky, you live in the kind of neighborhood like mine where you have neighbors that come to your aide in your darkest hour. Hell, you have such a great neighborhood where a complete stranger comes up to you and offers to put you up until your house is put back together in FOUR or SIX MONTHS! If you live in such a neighborhood, STAY; otherwise, LEAVE where you currently live and FIND one like mine -yo! A BIG shout-out to my peeps in Cresant Hills, Penn Hills, PA!

The firemen and EMTs were fantastic. They attended to my wife and son to make sure that they hadn't suffered any ill affects (my wife did receive some oxegen, but my son was totally fine, at least physically). One of the firemen was a chaplain and conselor (please forgive me as I do not remember their names; if my wife remembers them, I'll be sure to list them in a subsequent post). It was clear to me that he was genuinely concerned about my wife's state of mind and he took her aside to talk to her and help her cope a bit.

After about 2 hours, it was all over -the fire I mean; it was now DAY ZERO -time to begin the healing and rebuilding process.

Things hit home for me as I was sitting in the back seat of the insurance adjuster's car (great guy and great company -Erie Insurance- so far, anyway). Gary was reviewing our policy with us covering the major parts of it in terms of what coverage we had for contents and loss of use. In my mind, I was thinking "good grief, look where I am; look at where we are; what the hell!"

QUICK ASIDE: I have had several people ask me "do you have insurance?" I simply can not wrap my head around the idea of NOT having insurance for your home and property! Since I have a mortgage, I'm required to have insurance and it gets paid via escrow. If you do NOT have insurance, for God's sake GET A CLUE AND GET SOME!

Well, that's it for my very first post. I had always thought about joining the blogosphere. It's just that I thought I'd be blogging about technology since that's the space in which I live. I had NO IDEA that I'd be blogging about what the hell had transpired over the last week (I hopefully will be trying to post once per day sharing the recovery journey with all those who care to read).

SUGGESTION: If you have a comment about anything you've read or anything anyone else has commented upon, by all means, please share. If you have a tip, then kindly put the text "TIP:" or "SUGGESTION:" immediately before your comment or immediately in front of the paragraph of your post. Also, please try to follow the Blogger's Code of Conduct.

From the point of conception
To the moment of truth
At the point of surrender
To the burden of proof
From the point of ignition
To the final drive
The point of a journey
Is not to arrive
Anything can happen...

Canadian super group Rush - Prime Mover lyrics

Let the journey begin!