Have you ever been awakened in the middle of the night because something terrible was happening?
It’s definitely not a pleasant way to wake up. This happened to a 27 year old man named Nick, and he wrote about it on social media –
I was sleeping at my girlfriend’s house last night. Usually we pass out around midnight, but last night we didn’t get to sleep until around 1:30 or so. It was around 3am when I woke up and swear I saw someone’s head peeking in & staring at us through the bedroom door. Adrenaline shot through my entire body. I went into complete fight mode – I got up and charged towards the door, with my loyal, badass dog following right behind me. As I ran out and looked around, I didn’t see anyone. My dog and I probably looked around for a solid minute until I finally snapped out of it and realized it had just been a dream. And the fact my dog wasn’t going ape shit brought me out of it as well.
The thing is, even if it turns out to be nothing, for most people it’s still going to be difficult to get back to sleep.
My guest today is Tina – she’s a wife, and a mother. She was awakened in the middle of the night, and it wasn’t a false alarm. What woke her up was an ACTUAL alarm. Tina’s house was on fire.
If you’d like to contact Tina, she’s in the WWTL Facebook group.
Full show notes and pictures for this episode are here:
https://WhatWasThatLike.com/231
Graphics for this episode by Bob Bretz. Transcription was done by James Lai.
Want to discuss this episode and other things with thousands of other WWTL listeners? Join our podcast Facebook group at WhatWasThatLike.com/facebook (many of the podcast guests are there as well)
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Episode transcript (download transcript PDF):
Have you ever been awakened in the middle of the night because something terrible was happening?
It’s definitely not a pleasant way to wake up. This happened to a 27 year old man named Nick, and he wrote about it on social media –
I was sleeping at my girlfriend’s house last night. Usually we pass out around midnight, but last night we didn’t get to sleep until around 1:30 or so. It was around 3am when I woke up and swear I saw someone’s head peeking in & staring at us through the bedroom door. Adrenaline shot through my entire body. I went into complete fight mode – I got up and charged towards the door, with my loyal, badass dog following right behind me. As I ran out and looked around, I didn’t see anyone. My dog and I probably looked around for a solid minute until I finally snapped out of it and realized it had just been a dream. And the fact my dog wasn’t going ape shit brought me out of it as well.
The thing is, even if it turns out to be nothing, for most people it’s still going to be difficult to get back to sleep.
My guest today is Tina – she’s a wife, and a mother. She was awakened in the middle of the night, and it wasn’t a false alarm. What woke her up was an ACTUAL alarm. Tina’s house was on fire.
Scott
When this happened, you were about to start a new job. What was that?
Tina
I was starting my first year of teaching. Anybody who has done teaching and invested themselves into a teaching career knows that the first year of teaching is no joke. There’s a bundle of nerves, there’s a lot of feelings, there is a lot of planning that goes into place. And I think one of the most exciting things about your first year of teaching is getting your classroom set up. I mean, most teachers have this idea of how they want their classroom to be, and I think that’s just an exciting part of being a new teacher.
Scott
Yeah, the creative part. What grade were you going to teach?
Tina
I was going to teach fifth grade. I accepted a position as a fifth grade teacher, and there were six of us. We have a very big school. They were all so welcoming and nice. We had just had a new principal too. I was hired with one principal and then she was promoted, and then we had a new principal come in. So, we were starting this journey together, which was kind of fun.
Scott
And you have two daughters. Tell us about your girls.
Tina
So Emilee now is 16 and Hannah is 20. At the time that this took place, Emilee was going to be in fourth grade and she was transferring to the new school with me. So, she was starting at a new school, but I was going to be there with her. Hannah was starting her eighth grade year and she had already been in middle school doing the middle school thing, so it wasn’t anything fancy or big for her. She was just starting her 8th grade year. They’re both just really good girls and I am so blessed to have them as my daughters.
Scott
Yeah. And they were little then?
Tina
Yeah, 4th grade and 8th grade.
Scott
Teachers have the whole summer to set their classroom up, but you went in pretty early in June. Why did you do that?
Tina
Well, part of it was the excitement. Before I became a teacher, I was a manager in several different retail experiences and I had noticed that the people that I was hiring just didn’t have good skills for the work field, so I had always wanted to be a teacher. When Emilee entered kindergarten, I decided to go back to school to become a teacher, so I quit managing retail and did that. I always had in my head that, if I was going to be a teacher, I was going to do a city theme for my classroom. So, I was kind of excited to get this up and running because I wanted to teach my students how to be good, hard workers and what the work field really is like, and incorporate being a manager and having employees and incorporate all of that into my classroom. So, I had this big idea in my head. I was excited to get started. Most teachers though, especially this year, didn’t even get started until August in setting the classroom up. Most teachers don’t. They want to take the summer, but I just had this sinking feeling like I shouldn’t wait, like I needed to get in there and get it all set up. And so I did. As soon as I got my keys to my classroom, my girls and I, we worked so hard on setting up my classroom. By the end of June, it was completely ready to go. The kids could walk in the first day and it was ready.
Scott
That had to be a good feeling.
Tina
It was. It was so exciting. In fact, the new principal, she was doing a walk around and she sent me an email and she’s like, “I can’t believe you have your classroom up already. It’s so cute. How exciting for you!” And it just was another thing that was off of my list of many things we had going on at the time.
Scott
And speaking of things going on, you were prepping your home to sell?
Tina
We were. We had lived in this home at the time, going on 11 years, and it was our starter home. Hannah was two when we moved into it. We felt like it was time to get into something more of our dream home that we wanted, and with getting my degree and going into teaching and the market was so good, we’re like, “Yeah, let’s do it.” So, in addition to getting my classroom ready, we spent all summer long painting, putting in new flooring, we did a backsplash, we made it so that it was ready to sell, and it looked so beautiful. It was great.
Scott
This was definitely not a vacationing summer for you guys.
Tina
No, it was not. We did not take any vacations that summer and we invested all of our time and energy into getting our house ready to sell. We were told by a realtor that, if we put forth the effort, we would be able to get more for our money. So I always kind of started looking at homes and what we wanted in addition and getting approved for a new home, and we went through all of that process as well.
Scott
There was an issue with your house fire alarms, what was going on there?
Tina
It’s just the status quo too. That fire system only lasts about 10 years. It kind of started in April in the master bedroom. The fire alarm did the annoying beep, like, in the middle of the night. It was doing that beep where the battery was dying. So, we always kind of kept batteries on hand to replace it and Joe went and replaced it so we could go back to sleep and it kept beeping. So, he just completely, “Oh my gosh, I’m so sick of this.” So he just ripped it, took it apart, undid the wires. He is an electrical engineer, so he knew exactly what to do and he took out the wires. Then, a couple days later, another one started beeping.
As part of getting our house ready to sell – I remember this conversation like it was yesterday – Joe and I were in our room and the fire alarm wire was just there, and he goes, “Above anything else, we need to put replacing the fire alarms a priority.” And Joe is so big into safety. Right after we got married – I want to say it was my first birthday – he got me, like, a car safety kit for my birthday present, and I was like, “What the heck is this? Why are you giving me that for my birthday?” And he was like, “I want to protect the people I love.” And he’s always been that way. I was that bratty person that never wanted to wear their seatbelt and he would not drive anywhere with me without me wearing my seatbelt. He would yell, “Seatbelt!” and make me put it on. So that kind of tells you the person that he is. He was so big into safety and I remember him looking at me and he says, “This needs to be a priority.” And I feel so strongly about it. It’s like we need to replace the fire alarms. And I said, “Okay, order them.” And so he did. He spent the next weekend replacing the whole system in the house so that we’re up and running.
Scott
You listed your house for sale and what happened?
Tina
The day that we listed our house for sale– remember this, the market is going crazy where we live, but I didn’t expect it to be this crazy. We listed our house for sale on August 4th in the evening. I had gone through the whole entire house. I had a good enough camera. I just figured I would take the pictures. My realtor, who was actually my great aunt, she helped me. She went to Home Goods and she helped me stage it and it was ready to go. Oh, it was so beautiful. It got so ready to sell and I was very excited about it. We listed it that night and the next morning her phone was off the hook. People were wanting to see it that day. So the whole day was booked with showings that day. So that night we had three offers put in. So they kind of got into a bidding war and we were really excited and then we finally decided on one. We went to bed so excited that night.
Prior to the showings though, I went down in the basement. Joe being an electrical engineer, he has a really hard time parting with electronics. With his job, he sees old electronics get thrown away all the time, and he rescues them and makes a huge pile of all of these stupid electronic parts in the basement. So when my aunt called me and was like, “Hey, you have a showing. You have another showing and you have another showing,” and I’m like, “Oh my gosh, I don’t want people coming to the basement and seeing all this junk everywhere.” So I went downstairs and I started just quickly organizing it and making it look presentable. Well, part of this was he had 200 of the coin cell batteries. They’re about the size of a nickel and they are used in lots of different little electronics. I didn’t even know he had them until I went down into the basement and as I was cleaning up and straightening up. They were on a table and they were set individually in the tray and they were stacked one on top of another. When I was moving things around, I bumped the table and the batteries went everywhere. I had people showing up to the house in a half hour, so I was like, oh my gosh. So, I just threw all of the batteries in a tote and I had put a lot of his other electronics in there that he had – hard drives and an old printer. I mean, just anything that he could use to have a part and build a cool project with, he saves. So I just gathered them all up and threw them in there.
Scott
Were these batteries that still had some juice left in them or were they completely dead?
Tina
They still had some juice left in them.
Joe
I work as an electrical engineer for a medical alert company.
Scott
Tina’s husband, Joe.
Joe
At the time that this happened, we had previously developed a new fall detection transmitter device. As part of the development process, we’d been testing several hundred devices. So at the end of this development, we had several hundred coin cell batteries that had been labeled for testing use because these batteries were partially discharged. We couldn’t just use them in production, so they were just going to be disposed of. I like to have side projects that I do at home just for fun, and I thought to myself, “I can do something cool with these.” I didn’t have a specific project in mind, but I thought I would figure out something cool to do with them. So they were stored in plastic trays inside a cardboard box, which is how they’re shipped to us from the manufacturer. When they stay in the trays, they are very safe – they’re prevented from shorting out on each other. I had seen these batteries get a direct short on them and they don’t even get warm.
Scott
Did you tell Joe about that mess or that spill?
Tina
I did. When he got home from work that evening, I told him, “Hey, I knocked over all of those batteries downstairs and threw them in a bin. We probably need to take care of that.” I had known that just prior to my schooling that batteries can generate heat, so I just had it in my mind that I needed to tell him that happened. Well, that was before my aunt called me with the offer. So, we spent the next couple hours on the phone with her and going back and forth and deciding what we were going to do. It was just a really crazy night. We didn’t go to bed until 11 after. I think we decided and signed the paperwork that we were accepting the offer at 10.30 that night. I woke up at about 2.30 that morning to the fire alarms blaring and I kind of rolled over and I was so annoyed because I was so tired. I mean, it had been just a crazy day – the day before. I had just so much going on in my mind with selling the house and starting a school year, and it was just a lot, and I remember being so annoyed that the fire alarms were going off.
I woke up and then Joe woke up and I hit him and I was like, “Why are they going off?” And he just said, “Not again.” And he’s like, “The batteries probably need to be replaced or something.” But at this time, all of the fire alarms were going off and that hadn’t happened before. It was usually, like, one or two that went off at a time, but not all of them, so I told him to go and check what was going on. So, he opened the door. All of the bedrooms were upstairs and there was kind of a common area where all of the doors from the bedroom led to this common area at the top of the stairs. So I went to my door and Hannah had opened her door and had asked what was going on. Joe was on his way downstairs and he said it’s just probably a false alarm again, and then he headed downstairs.
Joe
When I headed down the stairs to the main level, I could smell just a hint of smoke, and I thought it was from a wildfire that was active in the area at the time. The mountain behind our house in a previous year had caught on fire, and we had watched it slowly creep down the mountain before it was fully contained. So I had that in the back of my mind. But I decided to check the basement just to be safe. When I got to the main level and I opened up the basement door, a huge wall of smoke came rushing out. I just had a moment of absolute shock because I was not expecting that. I then realized I needed to get my family out and I yelled, “Son of a bitch! Our house is on fire!” at the top of my lungs.
Tina
All of the sudden I heard him yell, “Son of a bitch! Our house is on fire!” And I yelled, “What?” And he screamed back, “Call 911 and grab the girls!” At that time, I had extreme shock running through my body. I remember just feeling really tingly all over. We have an important documents folder next to my bed and I grabbed that and I told Hannah to stay there and wait for me. I grabbed my phone, I got 911 on the phone. I told Hannah to follow me down the stairs, but I needed to go get Emilee. She was in the next door over, and she hadn’t opened the door yet.
Emilee is kind of funny. She has always been our child that sleeps through anything and can sleep on anything. When she was younger, she would just sleep on the floor or she would put herself to bed. She’d be like, “Mom, I’m tired. I’m going to bed.” And she was, like, 2 or 3 years old. She was a very deep sleeper. So, I kind of had to go shake her and I said, “Emilee, get up. The house is on fire.” And she looked dazed at me. She’s like, “What?” And I was like, “Get up.”
As I was running down the stairs, I had both girls behind me and I was on the phone with the 911 operator. The 911 operator got on and they always asked what the address of the emergency was and I told them what the address was, and then I said, “Our house is on fire.” And she said, “Did everyone get out okay?” By this time, I had gone down the stairs and, when we got to the main floor, it was completely filled with smoke. So up until that point, when he went downstairs to check on the fire alarms, there wasn’t smoke. I know that, when you talk about fire safety, anytime you talk to a fire department, they always tell you to leave your doors closed because it really can save your life. We saw that it was very evident because there was no smoke before he had opened the door. As soon as he had opened the basement door, it was completely filled with smoke and it wasn’t smoke from wood fire burning. It was a toxic, chemical smell coming from it. It was really intense. It’s a smell that I probably will never forget.
When I got outside, the 911 operator asked me if everybody was outside. My husband was already outside waiting for us because, before then, we had talked about– one of my daughter’s assignments and school was to talk about a fire plan. So, we had already kind of talked about what that plan looked like. However, we did not follow the plan whatsoever. I think, when you’re in that situation, your main goal is just to get out. The fire hadn’t reached the main floor yet. It wasn’t like we were up at the top floor and trying to climb out a window, but when I did get to the main floor, the smoke was awful. It was so bad.
Hannah had followed me right out. The 911 operator said, “Is everybody out?” And I turned around. Hannah was right behind me like I had told her to, and Emilee was not there. I told the 911 operator, “My daughter’s not here. My daughter’s not here with me.” And she said, “Do not go back in.” And I said, “I need to go back in.” That sheer panic… I just felt so helpless. It felt like eternity but, 30 seconds later, Emilee came out behind me. I, mean, it was probably 30 seconds to a minute, but that felt like eternity. So then I told the 911 operator that we were all out. At that point, I had started crying and she said, “Just stay with me.” The firefighters are on their way. It’s actually a sheriff that showed up first. By this time, we had crossed the street. There was, like, a little park across the street from where we lived, and we were by that fence.
Scott
I got to ask you this. Why did Emilee not come out with you?
Tina
I asked Emilee this later. I said, “What took you so long to come out of the house?” And she said, “Mom, I learned in school that we’re supposed to crawl through smoke. And so I was crawling my way through” and she said it so excitingly, like she had listened to her teacher and she was not phased at all by what was going on. So she was so proud of herself, not knowing that she had sent her mom into a state of panic that I probably hope I never have to experience again. At that point, I just laughed. Of course, you listen to your teacher. She was that kind of kid that always listened to her teacher.
Scott
When you were out there before she came out, Joe was already outside. Was he going to go back in and get her?
Tina
I had gotten the girls across the street and Joe actually came. I was so worried and focused about my girls. I thought maybe Joe had gone out the back or something like that. He came out, like, a minute later because he had gone upstairs to put his shirt on because he didn’t have a shirt on. So there’s so many things that we learned from this, and one of them is that we need to make sure that, when fire alarms are going off, we put on our clothes first. We were all standing across the street in our pajamas. Since it was August, it was still a chilly night. I remember being really cold and I think it was maybe because my body was in a state of shock. I remember standing and just Joe had his arm around me and was comforting me and I was just crying.
After the firefighters got there and I hung up with the 911 operator, I immediately called my mother-in-law. My mother-in-law lived on the next street over, just down the street from us. So I told her that our house had caught on fire and I asked her if she could come pick up the girls. The girls were just sitting on the curb at this time. Hannah was completely glazed. She was emotionless at this point. Emilee could care less what was going on. She just wanted to go back to sleep. So I told my mother-in-law that I needed her to come get the girls and Emilee just to go back to sleep.
After I called my mother-in-law, she said she was on her way, then I called my mom. My mom was visiting from Missouri at that time and she was staying with my great aunt, who is my realtor. I called my mom and told her our house had caught on fire and to wake up Aunt Shirley and tell her. So my mom got in the car – they were staying about 45 minutes away – and my mom said that my aunt, just the whole time, kept saying, “Oh my hell. Oh my hell. Oh my hell.” Like over and over again on the whole car ride to where we were. She didn’t know how to react. I mean, it was the most insane thing just to have our house for sale and get the offers and then, all of a sudden, our house is on fire.
The firefighters went in, there were three different agencies that showed up. I mean, we were in a smaller town, so we had a fire station kind of by us. And then there was one that was about 10 minutes away, and then there was another one that was about 20 minutes away. All three of those showed up. They came and went downstairs, went in the house with their hose and things like that. I remember them bringing out this big huge black thing – two firefighters were carrying it – and they set it in the grass and we’re just spraying it. Then, the fire chief came over and talked to us and he said, “Do you know anything about batteries?” Joe and I looked at each other and we’re like, “Oh my gosh.” He said, “When we went down in the basement, there were all of these batteries shooting at us like bullets. It looked like the fire had started in this bin and it looked like there were some batteries in there not stored properly.” So Joe was like, “Yeah, that was me.” And then he explained the whole situation that we had just listed our house for sale. I mean, the house still had the for sale sign in the yard. We explained to the fire chief, “Yeah, she had gone downstairs to clean and knocked the batteries over and threw them in this tote.
When the firefighters had kind of got the fire all out, the sheriff went in because I was really worried about the damage. I didn’t know what to expect. I didn’t know if it had gotten to the main floor or upstairs at that point. I had no idea. After they kind of had put the fire out, the sheriff went in there with a mask and she came out and kind of told us that what she saw and that it didn’t look like the fire had reached the main floor, but there was a ton of smoke damage and that the basement had– it looked like there was a lot of books that had caught on fire and different baby pictures. She told us that she saw a wedding picture that had caught on fire. At that point, it really hit me of what we could have lost.
Then, the fire chief came over and he said that what had really been crazy was that where the fire had started, where I had placed the bin, was directly under a very small tube that went outside. It was like for the water supply to the outside, like for the sprinklers, but it was made out of plastic. So the fire had gone up the wall to the ceiling. Since the ceiling wasn’t closed– because it was a partly finished basement – it wasn’t all the way finished – in the rafters was that tube, and it had burned a hole in the tube. So it had started to drip water on the fire.
Then, my husband told the fire chief that we had just replaced the fire alarms and that he really felt like that was something he needed to do, and he is so grateful that he did. The fire chief looked us dead in the eye and he said, “If you would not have replaced those fire alarms, you all would have died. That smoke is so toxic that if it made its way upstairs, you would’ve died from the smoke.”
Scott
Because of the plastic bin that it was in.
Tina
The chemicals in the battery. They were lithium ion batteries. Plus, he had a lot of different chemicals down there. I don’t think that they all reached the– in fact, another part of it is that there was a table of chemicals from when he had an aquaponic system. If the fire had reached those, the whole house would’ve blown up. So just that small trickle and the fire alarm, us replacing the fire alarms, the fire chief was very certain that saved our life.
Scott
So where did you guys go for the night?
Tina
When the fire happened, it was about 2.30. We stopped working with the fire department and the sheriff about 4 AM. Joe and I, we asked the fire chief if he could get our car keys because they were still in the house. So, they brought the car keys out to us and we drove over to my mother-in-law’s. When we got to my mother-in-law’s, my girls were downstairs and Emilee was asleep, but Hannah was not asleep and she was having a really hard time. We are a religious family and I just remember being really grateful that our lives were spared. My husband said, “We should say a prayer of thanks,” and we all just kind of got down on our hands and knees and prayed to God and told him, “Thank you for sparing our lives.” And that we were grateful that Joe was inspired to replace the fire alarms. We’re thankful that it wasn’t worse than it was.
After that, we kind of just laid there in the dark down in the basement of my mother-in-law’s. We tried to sleep. It wasn’t really easy. One of the things that happened was the sheriff had put us in contact with the Red Cross. It was probably about 9 AM when my mother-in-law came downstairs and told us that a lady from the Red Cross was there. She had come and given us blankets and a toiletry kit, and then she gave me some gift cards for food vouchers, and she kind of walked us through– she asked us if we had insurance and we said we did. So she kind of walked us through what the next steps were. After we met with her, I called the insurance company and I was so impressed with the insurance company because, within two hours, they had booked us a hotel for us to go and stay in at this point. I started to realize that I had nothing with me. I was in my pajamas still. I had no clothes. I didn’t have my medication. So it really hit me like, “Oh, we don’t have anything.” So I called my mom and I just started crying and I thought, “Mom, I have nothing.” The insurance company wasn’t going to be able to meet with us until the next day to do an assessment on the house.
Scott
And you weren’t allowed to go back in the house to get anything right? Because it wasn’t safe.
Tina
Yeah. The fire department had made that very clear to us – because of the toxic smell that was in the house – not to go back.
Scott
It wasn’t because the house wasn’t structurally sound anymore. It was because of that toxic.
Tina
Right. So my mom went shopping for us and got us each an outfit that we could wear. Because this was on a Sunday, the appraiser wouldn’t be able to come out until that Monday, so we went to the hotel. When we got to the hotel, there were two rooms that were connected to each other. One room had a king-size bed and the other room had two queen-size beds. So the girls could be in one room and Joe and I could be in the other room. When we got to the hotel, Hannah went into the other room. She came back and she had made a list of things that she was grateful for. On that list was things like Nana lives close by and grandma was in town. We had told the girls about the water dripping on the fire and she wrote that, and she wrote about the fire alarms and then she wrote that no one got hurt. I took a picture of that list because, in all of what had happened, the thought of an eighth grader to make, “Okay, this is what I’m grateful for.” She put it really into perspective for us and that everything was going to be okay.
The next morning, we woke up and met the adjuster at the house. At this point, we went in with masks. Basically, the adjuster said that it should be okay to go in. We went in masks. I got my medication and the smell was really strong even with the mask on. The adjuster told us that he was going to send over a cleanup crew, and what they do is they gather all your clothes– because our clothes didn’t catch on fire or anything like that. Every single item in our house had smoke damage, every single item, so they gathered up all our clothes and they ozoned them and put them through a special cleaning process. Then, they showed up at our hotel a couple of days later, which was really nice because, then, we had at least clothes to wear.
Scott
I had never heard of that before. You said they were treated with ozone and that just kind of brought them back to the way they were before?
Tina
Yeah. They washed them and then they ozone them to get the smell out. They have it down to science, how it works, but they tagged every single item of clothing with a tag that had our name on it. It has the serial code on it. It had the description of what the clothing was, and then it had a number attached to it. So every single piece of clothing had that on it.
Scott
That’s had to be a big relief just being able to have your clothes back.
Tina
Yes. That was huge. Having my medication was a huge thing. Then, we kind of started to look at– okay, well, we started calling our hotel a “home-tel” and we had free breakfast every morning. We had a pool and we had an exercise room and we had a person who came and made our beds and took out the garbage bars every day. So we kind of turned it into this fun thing.
Scott
Yeah. kind of like a vacation.
Tina
Yeah. That’s kind of how we looked at it. The crazy part is that, at the same time, school was starting. So, I emailed my principal and told her that our house had caught on fire and she asked if she could let my team know and I told her that she could. School started. Teachers had to be at the school a week later by contract. So it was kind of a crazy time because I was starting school and the girls were going to be in school.
Scott
This is where I assume you’re thinking, “I’m sure glad I got my classroom ready early.”
Tina
Yes, right. Looking back at this whole experience, I think I probably said that 20 times to Joe, “I’m so glad that I got it ready” because, at that point, like I said, the kids could walk into it like it was ready to go. So I started getting things prepped for our back-to-school night and the first day of school and just started the adventure from there, living in our home-tel.
Scott
Do you guys take pictures of the kids on the first day of school each year?
Tina
We do. Every year, we take pictures of the first day of school and, with it being my first year of teaching, I wanted to take a “first year of teaching” picture. The thing is, on their first day of school, because the hotel was so far away from their girls’ school, I asked my mother-in-law if the girls could stay with her before school started. So she actually had them on their first day of school and took the pictures and I took my “first year of teaching” picture in the hotel room. Joe took it for me. So our pictures of our first day of me in the hotel, and Emilee and Hannah at my mother-in-law’s house.
Scott
When you show people those pictures, then the whole story comes out. Right? Unless they know it already.
Tina
Yeah. Yep. The other part of this is, because I didn’t crawl on the floor like Emilee and I have asthma, I had to go in for smoke inhalation treatment. I had an awful cough after and I was having a really hard time. My inhaler wasn’t helping at all. So I had to go in right before I started school and do some breathing treatment at the doctors to help with the smoke inhalation.
Scott
One of the common things in schools, especially towards the beginning of the year, is they have fire drills. How do the girls handle that?
Tina
Prior to starting school, I emailed Hannah. So Hannah has an anxiety disorder and I had emailed her counselor and asked if I could meet with him and we had a meeting and I told him about the house fire and Hannah was very worried about going back to school. She was having panic attacks and she was showing severe signs of PTSD. So, in addition to meeting with her counselor, I had her going to therapy and the therapist had recommended me meeting with the counselor and talking about what they could do in a fire drill situation. So when I met with the counselor, he told or reassured us that, before a fire drill, anytime there was a fire drill, he would come get Hannah and escort her out of the building prior to the fire drill so that she did not have to be a part of it. I also met with Emilee’s new teacher because it was a new school, and I told her what had happened.
Emilee wasn’t showing any signs of anything. She was just like, “Whatever. I live in a hotel and go swimming every night.” This wasn’t big a deal to her as it was Hannah. With Hannah being older, I think it affected her a lot more. But with the fire alarms going off in the middle of the night and Emilee not waking up and just her personality, she just went with the flow. So we did have a fire drill the first week at our own school and I knew that we were going to be having the fire drill.
I remember talking to my class– it was very raw still. It had only happened two weeks before school had started and my emotions were still very raw. I was very honest with my class. I told them that I was living in a hotel because, two weeks ago, my house caught on fire and that my life was safe because of fire alarms, and that fire drills are extremely important because their safety is the most important thing to US teachers at school, and we practice that so that we can keep the kids safe. And I said, “We need to take these fire drills very seriously because they can save your life if there’s a real fire at school or at home.” So I did this probably about a half hour before the fire drill, and I remember so many– all the hands shot up. So many questions came about because they wanted to know everything. I was very open with them. I did make it a big point that they need to go home and have a conversation with their families about fire alarms and having a safety plan.
Then, I also talked to them about making sure that their families are storing batteries properly. We rotated for teaching science and my theme that I was supposed to teach about was electricity and magnetism. So I taught all of the fifth graders that year about how the batteries caught on fire and that they generate heat and, if they short out, then it can cause a fire. So we talked a lot about that in my science class.
Scott
How long were you in the hotel?
Tina
So we were in the hotel for about a month. They worked really hard on getting the house put back together. They had to rebuild the basement and they had to ozone the whole entire house. That was a huge process because, in order to get all of the smoke damage out, they had to set up the ozone machines and we were told that you cannot enter the house while the ozone machines are running. So we kind of waited and the basement looked better than it did prior to selling the house because they finished the ceiling and they painted the stairs to get rid of all the smoke damage. They put more into it than what we had, so it made it actually even better.
When we were able to move back into our house, the first night that we moved back, I actually did have a panic attack because, like, it was just really raw being back in the house. And also, I could still smell smoke in the basement. I don’t know if it was my– because Joe says he couldn’t smell it and the girls couldn’t smell it, but I could. I had a couple people over. They were helping us move back our stuff because we had all of our stuff that we had from the hotel and our clothes and everything like that. We had to move back in, so we had a couple people neighbors come over and help us and I just started crying. I couldn’t move. It was just really big emotions. My husband got me calmed down and we went to bed and we re-listed our home the next day.
Scott
Yeah, that’s one thing I was also wondering about the original buyers. I assume they must have retracted their offer, right?
Tina
Yeah. Actually, what was crazy was that they still wanted the house. They wanted the house and they kept the offer in place, but then the bank, they didn’t qual– or if I remember right, they had a family thing happen and the bank wouldn’t qualify them anymore, so they rescinded their offer. We actually had an offer on a house as well before the fire, contingent upon us selling our house, and the sellers said that they would wait for us and then we just kind of felt like we weren’t supposed to move into that house anymore. We didn’t know when our house was going to be finished and we didn’t want them to have to wait for us. They said that they were willing to, but we just didn’t think that was fair, so we rescinded our offer or told them that we weren’t interested in it anymore. So we re-listed the house and kind of the same thing happened. We had our home sold within three days of the fire and we went looking for a new house and moved into the house we’re living in now.
Scott
Did the fire affect the selling price of your house?
Tina
It did not because– I mean, we had to tell them that it had been through a fire, but the insurance had done such a good job of cleaning it up and rebuilding the basement that it did not affect it at all. It was actually a rental company that ended up buying our house. I mean, we disclosed that there was a fire, but they didn’t care.
Scott
What’s your biggest lesson that you’ve learned from this experience?
Tina
There’s a couple of them. The biggest lesson I would say is you can replace your things. I mean, some things like– I lost a crib that had been in our family for over a hundred years that was down there. I can’t replace that. But in all reality, I don’t need it. And my husband lost his baby books and all his baby pictures and we lost wedding pictures and things like that. But we have the memories and so we could either replace the things and treasure the memories of the things that we did have, but we can’t replace a life. And I learned to be grateful for each other. I think, in terms of when we talked to each other now, there’s like the before-the-fire and after-the-fire and, shortly after that, COVID happened. So I feel that something that I learned is to just treasure the time that you have with your family and be grateful for that. We have each other, and that’s something I learned from Hannah, like her making that list and just looking at all of the things to be grateful for. That’s what we learned – that gratitude really can get you through anything in any trial, and that was a huge lesson from this.
Scott
Yeah, it could have been so much worse.
Tina
Much worse. It really could have. I even taught my students, like, there’s studies done that gratitude helps you be happier. So I teach my students that all the time. I talk about the fire and how just being grateful for looking at the positives and being grateful for those things. I know it’s hard when you’re in a really scary situation or a bad situation, but really being grateful can help you get through those things. We also learned a lot about fire safety. There were a lot of coincidences, I guess, that took place. First of all, you know it’s really important to replace your fire alarms. Once your house hits 10 years, you should be replacing your fire alarm system. It’s really important that, if a battery goes dead in your fire alarm, you replace it. I have been a huge advocate on Facebook and in Facebook groups for making sure that you’re taking care of the safety needs of your house, and you really do never know when a house could catch on fire, so those do save lives and that’s why they’re there.
The other thing we learned is that we had taken pictures of all of our things. We had taken pictures prior to the house on fire because we were putting up for sale. But because I had taken pictures, I had documented everything that we had. So I think it’s really important for insurance companies. We had to fill out a huge long document and it’s really important for you to keep track of your purchases, especially on big things. It’s important for you to take photos and have those saved onto a cloud somewhere for you to be able to deal with the insurance company. So that was another thing that we learned, which we just had already. But, that’s another thing that I talk to people about, making sure that they have.
We also learned about storing batteries safely. I did talk about, because a lot of people do have batteries not stored properly, if they short out– like, AA and AAA are a little bit different than coin cell batteries, but with people are using coin cell batteries for hearing aids and things like that, that’s why they come wrapped in the separate packaging. So if you don’t store them properly, they really can short out and catch on fire.
Scott
Do you have fire extinguishers in your house now?
Tina
We do. That was one of the very first purchases that I made after we moved into our new house. The running joke now is, like, anytime Joe brings one of his garbage rescues from work, I’ll say, “Now, is that going to catch our house on fire?” His coworkers still tease him about house fires or something, and then he’ll just say to him, “Oh, it’s too soon. Too soon, guys. Too soon.” He gets teased a lot about it. There were multiple times where we joke about that and humor is another thing to help you get through certain things.
Scott
It’s interesting. Joe is sort of the villain in the story because of the batteries, but he’s also the hero because of replacing the fire alarms.
Tina
Yes. Yeah. I actually blamed myself for a while just because I had thrown the batteries in the bin. I have a picture of the bin itself, and it really is flat as a pancake, but if you zoom in you can see, like, little circles where the batteries had melted into the bin. It was just a crazy, freak accident. I don’t know, you could say well, we weren’t supposed to move at that time, or what lessons did we learn from this? I really feel like, if anything, it’s helped me become a better teacher because I’ve been able to talk about safety to my students, a better neighbor, a better friend. It’s helped me become a better mom because I value my kids so much. The thought of losing Emilee when she’s crying on the floor, I just never want to go through that again. So it’s helped me become a better person.
Scott
Does Joe still have a collection of old batteries?
Tina
Heck no. And if he did, he would be in trouble. I’d probably be writing up divorce papers or something. He is not allowed. He still has a lot of electronic crap, but like I said, none of that is going to catch the house on fire.
Scott
One of the things that Tina remembered about that night is that when she and her family were waiting outside the house, even though it was summer, it was still pretty chilly. So, about a year after the fire, she helped run a service club at her school, and they made blankets for first responders to hand out to people experiencing a crisis.
You may not be aware of this, but October is National Fire Prevention Month. So today’s episode, and the next two episodes, will be personal stories of housefires. And believe me, each one of them will be very different from the others.
You just heard Tina talk about how the sound of those alarms was what gave them the early warning so they could escape the danger. What about YOUR smoke alarms – are they in good working order? Don’t put it off and risk your life, or the life of your family.
Okay here’s something I’m excited about – if you live here in Florida, I want you to know that we’re having an in-person meetup right here in the Tampa Bay area. And it’s coming up pretty soon – this is going to be on Saturday evening, October 11, 2025. We’re gonna meet up at 7 pm and just hang out and get to know each other! All the details are in the Facebook group, just see the pinned post at the top, or you can click on Events and you’ll see it listed there. That’s at WhatWasThatLike.com/facebook – but if you’re not in the group, just email me at Scott@WhatWasThatLike.com and I’ll get the information to you. I’m hoping I get to meet you there!
Graphics for this episode were created by Bob Bretz. Full episode transcription was created by James Lai.
And if you’d like to get a nice warm hoodie or all kinds of other cool stuff with the podcast name and logo, you can find the full selection at WhatWasThatLike.com/merch.
And here we are again, at this week’s Listener Story. I don’t even have to ask if YOU have a story, because I already know you do. Everyone does. Doesn’t have to be anything earth-shattering – just something interesting that happened to you. Record a 5-10 minute audio on your phone, and email it to me – Scott@WhatWasThatLike.com.
This story is from my friend Ken. He has a podcast called Curated Questions, where he explores and talks about the power of a good question. I was actually a guest on his show for episode 39, this past July. You can find out more at Ken’s website – curatedquestions.com.
In this story, Ken talks about taking a really long walk – a walk that had a big purpose.
Stay safe, and I’ll see you next time.
(Listener story)
I grew up in Central Arizona, became a Christian, adopted my dad’s conservative political views, and joined the Navy. After high school, I eventually moved to the suburbs of Washington DC and worked for the Navy as a contractor, then as a federal civilian. My bubble was intact and all was well. In 2016, my friend group expanded and I heard about experiences that were far different than mine. I started reading different authors, listening to people I hadn’t before, and asking questions I had never dared. The truths I was learning clashed with the stories foundational to my identities. I started asking about the history that was not taught in school. Why didn’t black service members get the GI Bill after returning from the World Wars? How is a black family supposed to build generational wealth when redlining is legal?
I learned the United States was populated with between 5 and 15 million indigenous people. I now question the integrity of the origin story I grew up with. As I read about all the broken treaties, I was told we were founded on Christian principles that didn’t align with the slaughter of millions. The disparities between black and white maternal death rates, infant mortality, and preterm birth rates dumbfounded me. The questions continued. I had been taught to love my neighbor and stand up for the oppressed, that all of our laws were just, and if you just pull hard enough on those bootstraps, the American dream is yours. I’d always believed that the United States had moved beyond race being a factor in the lives of its citizens, but I had recently learned that was not the case. I questioned, how can this country move forward if we don’t embrace the truth? I was tired of being lied to in support of a myth.
On Monday, May 25th, 2020, just like everyone else in the country, I rewatched and rewatched the clip of George Floyd being martyred. Constraining my horror to social media comments was not going to be possible. The following Sunday, May 31st, I completed my first of 101 weeks of walking every street in the alley in Washington DC while wearing a large sandwich board sign that read Black and Brown Lives Matter. I was out to be an encouragement to those that the project resonated with and have conversations with anyone who wanted to talk. The following day, I would post reflection pictures and a GPS map of the walk. Most passersby assumed I was just a middle-aged white guy out trying to earn liberal brownie points. While the physical characteristics may have been true, the interior was not. I was a straight ticket conservative from 1988 through 2016, a Navy veteran, an evangelical Christian, and someone who followed the rules. I had spent nearly half a century despising liberals and became despised by conservatives. The moment I slipped on the sign – I had never protested anything and was scared of climbing out of my car to start the walk – I planned for the worst and hoped for the best. Spare glasses, phone, keys, and ID in the car, and my belt could be used as a tourniquet if needed.
I learned no group is a monolith. I encouraged and angered all kinds of folks – black, white, brown, rich, poor. Everyone took a position about what I was doing, and I walked at the speed of conversation. Raymond Coates saw me walking down his alley and invited me into his backyard for a break and a chat. He had spent time in the infamous Lorton prison in Virginia and was well-versed in history.
After nearly five hours of eating lunch, sitting through a rain shower, and discussing seemingly every topic we could, I headed out to finish today’s walk, walking up a dead alley. A woman walking the other way said, “Hello, Mr. Officer,” because there’s no way a white man carrying that sign through my neighborhood is not a cop. A pair of neighbors were sure I was CIA, but they were kind enough to give me a baggie of fresh figs for the road. Buddy Harrison had spent time in prison and became a close friend. He was proud of the free food pantry he had installed and kept full, located in the field across from his house and the boxing gym. He ran to help the neighborhood youth stay off the streets. Sadly, he was gunned down on his front porch a couple streets over.
A woman started our conversation by leaning out her window with the question, “Are you packing?” To which I needed her to explain what she meant at first, and I said, “No.” I didn’t carry any weapons as I knew it would compromise the open-hearted vulnerability I carried as my defense – perhaps, naive, but I had a sense that I was protected in potentially other ways. The most credible threat was from a black man who didn’t like my smile nor my sign. He threatened multiple times to send the largest dog that I had ever seen to attack me if I continued down his block as he restrained his dog. I tried twice to appeal, but the threat remained, and I turned around. The day before my final walk, I returned and completed the 50 foot segment of road I had missed as a result of this interaction. And for the record, yeah, I was nervous walking through a predominantly black neighborhood.
A white guy, a few years older than me, wearing a Navy ball cap, carrying most of his possessions on his back, asked for a couple of dollars. I was out of cash by that time in the day, but tried to learn more about his story. Over a 15 minute conversation, he oscillated between begging for money and pulling out his empty hand to make a pistol and threatening to shoot me in the head. Soon enough, the neighbors pulled out their cell phones to record the spectacle of these two middle aged white guys, one wearing this large yellow sign and the other screaming into his face, threatening to shoot him with an imaginary gun and calling him a white blue eye devil. For the record, we’re both white and both have blue eyes.
When we parted, I wiped the spill from my face. An app tracked my steps to ensure I covered every street and alley. After 4 million steps, the distance from Washington DC to Las Vegas in a straight line with the longest daily walk being 28.6 miles. After 1300 conversations and Raymond being the longest, five pairs of shoes, and remarkably no parking tickets or thankfully muggings, I finished the walk on the now removed Black Lives Matter Plaza in front of the White House.
Additional lessons learned. Reflective white crosswalk paint is slick in the rain and water freezes on it before it does on the blacktop. During a long walk, porta-potties at construction sites are a legitimate lifesaver. Wearing a sandwich board on windy days sucks. White people don’t have the language to talk about racism and inequality. Splitting the district into black, white, and diverse neighborhoods, the data was stark. In black neighborhoods, I averaged 28 conversations a day. In diverse communities, there were 15 and in white neighborhoods, I averaged only four conversations per day, and this was in progressive DC. I can only imagine what this metric would look like elsewhere walking through the neighborhoods.
It was evident where redlining had previously occurred as indicated by the level of infrastructure in the built environment. I witnessed the beautiful homes, which indicated great wealth and the creative beauty of the impoverished community. A 30-something white guy asked if I could regularly walk his wealthy neighborhood as he had witnessed his white neighbors yell at black runners as they ran through the streets. For folks that look like me, this conversation feels like a chore. For others, it’s a matter of survival. I traded Myth for Truth and learned a great deal about Washington, DC, its people, myself, and the journey ahead for this country to fulfill the promises of the documents and the ideals that we hold dear.
One guy chased me down and said, I figured you’d lost a bet, or crazy or very committed, and he wanted clarity. I assured him there were no wagers involved. However, I think the truth is a mix of the others. I don’t have it all figured out. Biases remain. I keep learning, stumbling, getting it wrong, and needing others to speak into my life. I sat on porches with those who had marched during the civil rights movement and glad they were sitting this one out and enjoying lemonade. Their turn of marching is long over and the baton passed to a new generation. I discovered the bend of the moral arc of the universe towards justice will not happen on its own, but rather bent by the effort of regular people stepping up to take their turn, pulling and heaving it into place.