Well, this is really off topic compared to the usual stuff I post, but I'm still obsessing over this morning. So first off, I stayed up until about 2:50 AM last night with 7 friends building/using a party room (strobe lights, hanging glow poi, etc.). So yeah, I fell asleep around 3:00 AM, and woke up at 6:00 AM to one of my friends yelling "Fire".

I kind of did a double-take in my head, then jumped up and ran to the window where there was a huge wall of fire running up the house, I told everyone to get their expensive stuff and leave the house. Somehow or another my fire alarm wasn't going off despite the top of the room being, at this point, slightly smoky (the whole house smelled like what I imagine is burning paint, but it smelled horrible whatever it was). I grabbed my phone, called 911, gave my location etc. as calmly as I could, I know they dispatch as soon as you give location but I think they should make that more clear, since anyone who didn't know that would quickly lose patience with all the questions the dispatcher asks.

They basically asked where the fire was on the house, it was on the whole right side and the neighbor's fence as well, my dad started flipping **** and yelling at the dispatcher to hurry the **** up (Yeah let's yell at the person we're relying on for help..). He found a fire extinguisher and managed to get all the fire out of the garage where it had just begun leaking into (we have lots of propane and gasoline cans in there from our recent trip to Burning Man), and sprayed around the door, I'm guessing it helps prevent the fire from getting it but I'm not sure. At this point my mom got a hose and started trying to hose down the right side of our house, obviously not doing much, and got a bit of a burn on her hands but nothing serious, the fire truck finally (I say finally but it only took 6-7 minutes.. Feels longer sometimes) arrived and started spraying down the house.

I had no shirt on and most of my friends were the same since we were all just sleeping, and it was about 40 degrees outside and windy so a Fireman told us to go ask neighbors if we could stay in their house for a while. We were allowed inside and basically just played with their awesome kitten for 10-15 minutes as quietly as we could since it was still around 6:30 at the time and I think they had little kids sleeping. When we went back outside it was safe to re-enter the house and while we waited for the firefighters to chop into the wall (making sure there was no more fire I think) we just sat inside. Finally, the Firefighters set up to leave and aired out our house a bit, I looked in the garage, the door had fallen partly off, the firemen were in the process of removing it, and the whole corner/side of our house was scorched. The neighbor's fence melted as well but in terms of shelter, our house is fine and there are no major holes letting air in etc.

So.. Just kind of felt like typing it all out, feels good lol. Really scary moment for me (more so for my parents I'm sure since it's a pretty expensive house and obviously they paid for it) and I'm pretty happy my friend woke up when he did, 10 minutes later and I might be without a house.

We don't currently know the cause of the fire, didn't get to ask before the fire truck left, but I know it started in our backyard somehow and spread under our indoor staircase to reach the side of our house. I'm pretty much anxiously waiting for the newspaper to come just so I can see the cause they list.

I know that there were no cigarettes at the party, and I'm guessing that the fire started sometime around 5:30 AM long after we were asleep so I'm really curious as to what could have happened. We have a sprinkler system and all our bark dust/grass was wet so a small spark shouldn't have started a fire as far as I'm aware. Bleh, I guess I will find out in a few days.