It's Not The Fire That Kills You
It is a horribly cruel twist of fate to lose those whom you love. Emotional attachments of the deepest order cut violently asunder by some accident, some occurrence that you are incapable of predicting. Being within the confines of your own home, secure in the knowledge that your wife and your children are all abed and asleep for the night, and morning will come and another day will dawn.
Except sometimes another day dawns and brings with it untold misery. A set of events have taken place completely out of your control and nothing you can do is able to turn things around. Certainly that is so when you're woken out of a sound sleep to the screams of a loved one informing you that the home you're sleeping in along with them is being consumed by fire.
At one time, not all that long ago as history goes back a long, long way, there were no potentially life-saving devices like smoke alarms. Now there are such early warning signals. And they are, by law, expected to be installed and operational in every home. All too often it happens after a deadly fire that the investigating fire officials come to the conclusion that no alarm was present.
Or the alarm was there most certainly, but disarmed, useless, its batteries long dead, the need to actively ensure that the measure to which all householders should comply by law, if not because of the personal acknowledgement that this is their personal responsibility to themselves and to their loved ones, simply ignored.
This seemed certainly to be the case in a fire n Alexandria when a young mother of three children died of smoke inhalation, as did her three very young children. The house itself, to begin with, was not in compliance with building codes in the observation of safety regulations. It had a single entrance/exit - the front door leading to the porch.
The porch was said to be the site where the fire (inexplicably?) began, soon engulfing the front of the house, and certainly the first floor of the house, with its stairway leading to the second floor where the family was asleep until the mother awoke and became aware of the dreadful situation. She screamed, alerting her husband, who was sleeping in another room.
He is the only survivor of this little family. At 26 years of age, he has 'lost' his common-law wife, a three-year-old little girl, and a 22 month-old boy, along with another infant of eight months. He'd meant to marry Sarah Cholette. Whom he'd known for all of two months when she became pregnant with their first child.
He'd had tattoos etched on his shoulder with the names of the three children: Chloe, Jacob and Maxime. And, he said in a later interview, post-burn-recovery, that he'd meant to add Sarah's name, and his family name as well, once they married. He won't now have to bother, for, as he now says "I lost everything. Everything. And I pinch myself. I swear to God, every day."
This father of three deceased infants, one trusting woman, reveals his values; tattoos. Pity his values had no room to include a modicum of vigilance for their safety, in ensuring that the smoke alarms in such a house were not in working order.
Except sometimes another day dawns and brings with it untold misery. A set of events have taken place completely out of your control and nothing you can do is able to turn things around. Certainly that is so when you're woken out of a sound sleep to the screams of a loved one informing you that the home you're sleeping in along with them is being consumed by fire.
At one time, not all that long ago as history goes back a long, long way, there were no potentially life-saving devices like smoke alarms. Now there are such early warning signals. And they are, by law, expected to be installed and operational in every home. All too often it happens after a deadly fire that the investigating fire officials come to the conclusion that no alarm was present.
Or the alarm was there most certainly, but disarmed, useless, its batteries long dead, the need to actively ensure that the measure to which all householders should comply by law, if not because of the personal acknowledgement that this is their personal responsibility to themselves and to their loved ones, simply ignored.
This seemed certainly to be the case in a fire n Alexandria when a young mother of three children died of smoke inhalation, as did her three very young children. The house itself, to begin with, was not in compliance with building codes in the observation of safety regulations. It had a single entrance/exit - the front door leading to the porch.
The porch was said to be the site where the fire (inexplicably?) began, soon engulfing the front of the house, and certainly the first floor of the house, with its stairway leading to the second floor where the family was asleep until the mother awoke and became aware of the dreadful situation. She screamed, alerting her husband, who was sleeping in another room.
He is the only survivor of this little family. At 26 years of age, he has 'lost' his common-law wife, a three-year-old little girl, and a 22 month-old boy, along with another infant of eight months. He'd meant to marry Sarah Cholette. Whom he'd known for all of two months when she became pregnant with their first child.
He'd had tattoos etched on his shoulder with the names of the three children: Chloe, Jacob and Maxime. And, he said in a later interview, post-burn-recovery, that he'd meant to add Sarah's name, and his family name as well, once they married. He won't now have to bother, for, as he now says "I lost everything. Everything. And I pinch myself. I swear to God, every day."
This father of three deceased infants, one trusting woman, reveals his values; tattoos. Pity his values had no room to include a modicum of vigilance for their safety, in ensuring that the smoke alarms in such a house were not in working order.
"I wasn't there for my family like I wasn't there for them in the fire. It was terrible how fast it happened. It's not the fire that kills you, it's the smoke."
Labels: Family, societal failures
posted by Pieface @ 6:32 PM
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