(Aside from today’s Tiny Talk, which I had pre-scheduled a week ago, I haven’t made it into the blogosphere in days.  The “here’s why” bears sharing since it ties in very much with a lot of what I write about here.) 

My cell phone rang at midnight Friday, and it was the head of our church’s Hispanic ministry calling.  Since midnight is a little late to write it off as a “pocket dial” I grabbed the phone and started getting dressed.  The last four days have been a bit insane because I did.  But I’m so glad I did. 

At just before midnight, the house of a few of our Hispanic group members caught fire.  Not just any members, and not just any house.  It was the home of my now-very-good friend Reina, who I wrote about last year and who is expecting a baby girl at the end of April with her hubby Carlos.  She doesn’t have a car, so I’ve been taking her to her doctors’ appointments, and I’ve gotten to see her baby girl twice on the ultrasound screen.  So, yes, I’m pretty attached to this family. 

This also happens to be the house and the group who generously hosted the twins’ Fiesta de Cumpleaños last summer.  And we very well could have lost all of them. 

The cause of the fire is still under investigation, but it started outside the house on the wall shared with both the front door and the bottom of the stairs leading up to the second floor.  We had unusually high winds on Friday night, so the fire spread up the side of the house very rapidly.  All but one of the 10 people who were there that night were asleep.  It was that one who ran around, woke everyone up and then escaped with his own wife and their baby daughter whose hair actually started to smolder on their way out.  Reina and Carlos and several of the others had to find their way out through 2nd-story windows, since smoke was already filling the house and one whole side wall was ablaze. 

I arrived at 12:30 to a fire scene unlike any I’d ever seen.  I read later that there were 60 firefighters, which makes sense because there were so many engines, police cars, and flashing lights everywhere.  Foam and water gushed down the street.

 

 

 

As I made my way up to the house, I saw one of the woman being wheeled away on a stretcher.  She had leaped from her second floor window with her boyfriend and landed on her back.  They rushed her to Shock Trauma where, miraculously, they found she had no broken bones or long-term damage. 

It was a night where such miracles interwove with total devastation.  The fire was so large and spread so quickly that it took over an hour to put out.  Everything they owned was still inside the house:  ID, cell phones, paychecks, photos of family members back in Central America… as well as all their clothing and other possessions.  There had been no time to gather anything.

Reina told me the next morning that she went from being sound asleep to waking up to the smoke alarm and Carlos yelling to her “Get out the window!”  She said he didn’t even say there was a fire; he just smashed the (stuck) window with his arms, hustled her through, and followed.  She said once she realized what was happening and how big the fire already was, her only thought was for her younger brother who slept in another part of the house.  Her brother and mine are just about exactly the same age, so I could totally imagine how relieved she felt to see Luis and his best friend Mario already standing in the back yard. 

One by one, everyone was accounted for.  By 2:30 a.m. when the fire investigator let them leave, “Don Mario” (our director) and I divided them up and brought them back to our houses to sleep.  We returned with everyone the next morning, and it was then that the extent of the loss really sank in. 

 

 

As I look back at last summer’s pictures, it’s surreal that we went from this: 

 

…to this: 

 

 

We spent the rest of Saturday picking up basic necessities and driving everyone to family members’ and friends’ homes where they can stay temporarily.  But just before we left the house, I turned and quickly snapped this picture:

 

It’s the window through which my friends escaped.

Here are the faces of just a few of the friends I didn’t lose this past weekend.  Those from the house who I didn’t really know before the fire have become friends, now, too.  And I am so, so thankful that they are alive. 

I’ve spent the last few days organizing the relief effort through our church.  My phone has been ringing and ringing, and emails keep streaming in from people who want to help these families.  And it’s hit me that what started out a year and a half ago with an idea of “connecting our kids with more people who share their heritage,” “having someplace to practice our Spanish,” and “hopefully being helpful to one of our church’s ministries in the process” has become something altogether different.

I love this crew.  As I drove home on Saturday, past some incredible brush fires that swept through our area, I cried in my van.  And I’m no crier, most of the time.  But it hit me just how much I’m not prepared to lose any of these friends from this little “Iglesia Hispana” that Mario’s been trying to grow for the last six years.  Some of them are like family, now, and the rest could be.

“Cultural Exposure,” indeed.  I’m hooked.  And I wouldn’t have it any other way.