Miracle #2: My House Didn't Catch on Fire
To read about Miracle #1 click here.
Some of you may follow me on my instagram @shortformadeline and heard of the recent fire we had in our neighborhood.... this is not that story.
My son was two weeks out from surgery and I had been back to work for about a week coordinating the army of people who were helping take care of him when I couldn't. This was actually a shorter list, because my son only felt comfortable with a few people helping him go to the bathroom. On that list was my Dad, who came over that Thursday to babysit.
I wish everyone could have a Dad like I do. He is the father of 6 (yes SIX) daughters, and he is the ultimate handy-man. He is a doer by nature and doesn't like to sit still very long. So after getting my son breakfast and watching a few shows with him, my Dad did what he always does, and went to work on completing little projects around my house.
It is a revelatory experience when either of my parents come over while I am at work, and I relish coming home because they are always showing me what they accomplished while I was gone. It is like my own version of the Shoemakers Elves! This was true when I got home from work on Thursday as my Dad showed me what he did. One of the things that he found was an outdoor outlet that wasn't working, that he got in working order. This was critical because my roof ice-melting cables weren't turned on, so they couldn't do their job.
For anyone that doesn't know what they are, these are cables that are strung in a wave pattern at the edge of your roof that have heat coils inside so that a layer of ice doesn't build up under the mountains of snow we get on our house. If ice were to build on the edge it creates an ice dam that could lead to quite a bit of problems. (I had to Google this last part).
(Got this image from Amazon because I figured it would have less issues with copyrighted images.)
He got the outlet in working order, that section of cable started melting the snow/ice on the roof, and the week continued.
The weekend came and almost as quickly it was Sunday night. My son was a bit more mobile, but still using a bed pan, and it still took considerable effort to get him in and out of his wheelchair. He was nervous because we were finalizing plans to have him start back to school in a few days.
I tucked my son into bed in the living room as had been our routine, and busied myself with getting ready for bed. Call it a hand of God moment, but despite being exhausted, after I got out of the shower, I deviated from my routine, and decided to make myself some tea. I went to the kitchen and turned on a kettle of water. When my tea was ready, I was going to go into the living room to be by my son (I was sleeping in the bed next to him to help him still during the night), but instead opened my computer and was reading a few articles while drinking my tea up to my kitchen counter.
Again, I have no idea what spurred me to keep such a late hour when I had to be up early for work the next day, but as I was sitting up to my counter I heard this really grating sound. It sounded like someone grinding metal. At first I thought it was perhaps a snowplow that forgot to put its blade up that was going up the road, but I quickly dismissed that idea because snow wasn't expected until the next day. The sound didn't go away. I got up to investigate.
Looking out of my kitchen window all I saw was sparks flying. It was as if someone was holding multiple sparklers while sitting on the edge of the roof...except these looked like sparkler showers! I was so confused!
I went outside to investigate further. Once outside my breezeway door I looked to my outside light and it looked like the Fourth of July. It was as if someone was welding something on my roof and I was standing on ground level watching the sparks rain down over my light fixture. And it smelled. It reeked of burning electrical parts.
I immediately jumped into action. (One of my super powers is being able to assess a situation quickly and immediately act.) Guessing that they were coming from the heating cables, I ran over to the outlet and unplugged everything. Luckily I was able to do that safely because the shower of sparks was far enough over that they weren't falling directly over the outlet.
Once power was cut and the fire showers stopped, I ran back into the house, put on shoes, my coat, gloves, and grabbed my phone and keys to the garage.
After getting into the garage and grabbing the ladder, I set it up to investigate the roof line. (As I was climbing the ladder I might have sworn a little bit).
Things were still smoldering. What I found was a huge section of cable plastic had worn through exposing the metal coil inside, and that metal and been rubbing up against my metal gutter which caused just enough friction and noise that it not only alerted me, but created sparks. There were burn marks on the roof outlining other portions of cable that got too hot as well.
Because there was enough snow on the roof, and the shingles were wet, I was able to bury the smoldering cables in the snow and snuff out anything that still might be smoking. Then for good measure, I also cut the power to the outdoor outlet, even though nothing was plugged into it anymore.
So that was a mess... I was a mess... and as I came back inside and the adrenaline wore off a bit, I started to unpack the miracle.
Miracle #1 My Dad had showed me exactly what he had fixed on Thursday, so that I knew that that section of ice melting cables was working.
Miracle #2 I was not only awake at the hour that sparks started to fly, but was home, and in the kitchen which was close to where the cables were burning so I could see sparks.
Miracle #3 There was snow both on the roof and covering the grass, so that as sparks were flying nothing was ignited.
Miracle #4 There was no monetary damage to my house.
Miracle #5 My kids slept through the whole thing.
I then started running through the "what ifs." What if this had happened when the ground didn't have snow on it? What if it had happened when I was at work? What if something had caught on fire? What if metal didn't grind on metal alerting me to the problem? It could have easily consumed a portion of roof and who knows what else before I knew it was a problem. Then I started thinking about the real problem of getting everyone out were there a fire. I would be responsible for not only getting a sleeping toddler out of the house, plus my dog, and my tenant with her cat, but also hefting my son out of bed with a leg that hurts to move, in the dead of night in February! What if?
But nothing DID happen. We were safe, and it was after reporting what happened to my Dad the next day that he reflecting on all the miracles I had seen since my son's accident up until that point, when he said, "You must have a lot of angels watching over you."
Yes I do Dad. Yes I do. If that isn't a miracle, then I don't know what is.
Love,
Madeline
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