Kind Stranger Saved my Whole Family From a House Fire – By MJ

A few years ago, lightning struck the house directly next to ours in the middle of the night. It was so loud and bright that I sat up in bed and waited to hear the sound of a falling tree. At the time, I didn’t know that the lighting had struck the house next door. I only knew that it was very close. In my sleep state, not hearing a tree fall or a limb crack, I went back to sleep.

A bit later, I heard loud banging. I sat up again. Someone was banging on our front door. In the middle of the night. I was instantly afraid. I woke up my husband to tell him that someone was banging on our front door. We both crept down the hallway and saw the the blinds on the window were glowing red. We pulled up the blinds all the while hearing this constant banging. Our neighbor’s house was engulfed in flames, and the fire was blowing directly onto our house almost reaching our window! We panicked. We have four daughters. Our youngest has an autism spectrum disorder so she was easily frightened. We had to evacuate everyone quickly and find our cat. It became controlled chaos. When we opened our front door, I saw my neighbor from across the street running to our house.

She was screaming, “Give me the baby! Give me the baby!”

In the end, it was a three-alarm fire, and the house next door was destroyed. Our house was saved, but it took months to restore it. So, who was banging on our front door? Who woke us up in time to evacuate?

As it turns out, a woman two blocks away woke up and smelled smoke. The winds were high that night which caused the fire to blow onto our house and the smoke to blow up and away from the houses on our block. This was the reason we never smelled the smoke from the fire. This woman got dressed, and walked the streets until she found the source of the smoke. She then called 9-1-1 and woke our family up so that we could be evacuated. She stuck around in the background to make sure we were okay, introduced herself to me only once, and then disappeared.

I’ve never seen her again. But, our house would have caught on fire for sure had she not decided to get dressed and go on walkabout that night. And, due to the location of the start of the fire, we would have been trapped in our home as well. She most likely saved our lives. Oh, and strangely enough, the house the was razed by the fire was unoccupied. The owner had died two weeks earlier, and the only fire hydrant on our block was right in front of that house.

Author – MJ of Empowered Grace