Devestation

Today was suppose to be a good day.   We met Denny, Judy, Jennifer, Tom, and the kids (along with Tom's parents, sister, her husband, and their daughter) at Cascade Bay in Eagan.  We were celebrating Adam's Birthday.  It was a little cold and windy that day.    Tom left the waterpark before us to get pizza.  We were going back to their house to eat and open presents.  As we were driving back to their house, we saw tons of police.  Brian and I made some comments that soemthing big must be going on (little did we know what we were about to see).  As we got closer to their house we saw smoke in the air (we were still 1/2 mile or so away), then we were passed by fire trucks driving down the road.  The closer we got, the more we were able to see that the smoke looked awfully close to where we were heading.  We were talking about how that fire must be right by their house, must be the neighbors house.  We turned down the road and saw that Jennifer and Tom's street was blocked off.  We couldn't see anything except police and fire trucks down the block.  We drove around the block and came around to the other end.  At that time we looked down the street and saw that Jennifer was talking to the police.  OH NO!  We could see that their house was on fire. 

Brian let me out of the car and I ran down to see what was going on.  As I was running up to the house I saw the firemen breaking down their front door, I could hear them around the house breaking their windows.  Looking at the house we could see that there was smoke coming out of the attic as well.  A few minutes later a fireman came out of the house carrying a kennel....I could see Angel moving inside and knew that she was alive.  No one was in the house and everyone is ok.

The next three hours were surreal. 

The kids were at the neighbors house, pretty oblivious as to what was happening.  Jan got the the pizzas from Tom's truck and as the firemen worked on putting the fire and 'hot spots' out, we ate pizza-picnic style in the neighbor's back yard.

Saturday night Tom and Jennifer had a fire in their portable fire pit.  When they were done, Tom poured water over the fire, he is always real careful.  Sunday morning they moved the firepit closer to the house.  Apparently the coals were hot enough and with the wind that day, it was enough to somehow catch fire.

This week they will be put up in a hotel and eventually moved to a more 'temporary permanent' place.  The fire cheif told them that they could be out of their house for up to 6 months.  During this week there will be plenty of clean up to do and the insurance people will go through their things to determine what can be saved, what needs to be thrown, what can be cleaned, etc.