Fire!

This is a story about Fire. And Fighting Back.

At 15:44 on the 26th of February 2023, my life and my family's lives were turned upside down. We frantically dashed out of our burning home, introducing our 6-year-old son to some new swear words as we left.

This was not a petty fire. The zooming intensity + density of the black smoke around us should have alarmed us faster not to go back in to rescue small little possessions like phones, laptops, hats, records…, etc. but you will try: DO NOT.

As windows were exploding around me (300C-degree heat can do that) and as neighbours were screaming for me to get back (gas, apparently, is also a risk), I was desperately trying to ensure that there was nobody still in the flat above us: now, this is what panic really feels like.

Memories that will stay with me from that day are my son’s screams, the thickness and the blackness and the density of the smoke, the sound — the sound — the sound of the Fire and windows blowing out. Together, all of this stuff will leave scars in ways that will take time to surface and understand.

On the day of our Event, I had just taken off my shoes, having minutes before returned from playing footy with my son and one of his school friends. I laid out some vegetables for a roast dinner. I was looking forward to cooking it! I grabbed a beer (Zyweic) from the fridge, ready (as a neutral) to watch the Man U vs Newcastle U in the Carabao cup final (Man U won, sadly).

The fire alarm went off.

Fire alarms have gone off many times before in my 44 years of life and all previously have been due to silly things or simply false alarms. This one, however, potentially saved many lives (including those of neighbour's pets) but I approached it in those early seconds as more of a bother than a saviour (lesson learned) and I can tell you with certainty, every second counts.

We had to run out without simple stuff like phones and shoes, so the 999 call wasn’t made by me but by an anonymous driver who was instantly focused on the seriousness of this situation (and it was indeed quite serious) and stopped, dialled those numbers (thank you, whoever you were) and then cleared the road. There was then a rush of people asking “has the fire brigade been called?” and then everyone on the street was phoning and shouting down their phones that they couldn’t hear sirens… but they did eventually come: 4 local stations sent teams.

Once the flames are out, the sense of panic subsides and it is replaced with some much more long-term emotions and side effects, so be warned.

Okay, now let’s take charge.

• Best to lock emotions up in a box for now. Lock that box up for a month or so.
• Two immediate tasks for you are to find a place for your family to spend the first night and to get your dead home boarded up (we are in central London so that really did need to be done). These are non-trivial tasks given the circumstances that you find yourself in.
• Police and Fire Brigade will want frank chats with you. I told them that everything I would say is “off the record” because I wasn’t sure what I was saying, and I felt that they were exploiting my vulnerability to get information.
• Again, you need to get your house boarded up… how?? The fire brigade or police may be able to help arrange this for you, but for us, it was a rented home and the agency took over (even on a Sunday). However, this took a lot of time and organisation. It’s possible that you’ll just have to leave it open overnight, depending on the time of your Fire. I stood out in the cold until late at night. The council officer can advise but be prepared to have to find local help yourself for this. Not having a phone or wallet can be a hindrance (damn fire).
• Weirdly (I initially thought) no Fire Fighter was able to answer questions about the impact of our Fire on us, simply (and kinda obviously, in retrospect) because they have never been on the receiving end of such an event (clever…). They will just firmly keep you at a safe distance, politely.
• A council officer came on the day to help find accommodation for us, and that should be arranged for you by the Fire Brigade.

As I think back at the horror I saw on my neighbour's faces, I wonder what they saw on mine?

• Your neighbours will step in. It’s devastating what happens and everyone is in shock, but neighbours that you have never spoken to before will show that “wartime spirit” we hear of and it’s a pity it takes such desperate measures for us all to come together — we really enjoy our neighbour's company now!

Now, let’s fight back.

• Once the fire investigation is complete (2 days for us) you will be allowed back in. Don’t expect to get back inside on the day of the event; this surprised me, but it does make sense (toxic air and suspicions).
• You will be tempted to bag up stuff and try and salvage as much as possible… draw a line in the sand with you and your family and just move on is my advice. Having spent two days in a dark sooted house (no electricity, of course, so it will be very dark for you) to little avail, prefer to have just a little moment to yourself and say a quiet goodbye to everything. Those jeans, decks, and t-shirts are not worth 4 weeks of cleaning and soaking and ozoning to get clean (won’t work, anyway). Toys you can replace. Clothes are just rags. Possessions are just things.
• Everything inside your home has by now been either burned or scorched, or else irrecoverably melted or covered in toxic soot and then drenched by the Fire Fighters who have to ensure the fire is really, really out. Let go of your feelings for your possessions straight away and look to regeneration instead, and the improvements you can make to your lives as part of this.
• The melted plastic makes the smoke toxic, and the smoke gets into the smallest part of your home, so everything must go. That includes everything that you relied upon from your kitchen. Think about how you will replace the tat that you secretly didn’t like anyway with much smarter stuff (that you will get contents insurance for).
• Clothes without the weird auburn/brown fire stains (that you would learn about, and actually can look quite cool!!!) can be “ozoned” to remove the smell but at a cost (per garment). Anything other than your most treasured clothes, bin them — unless the stains are like uber-tie-die :)
• You’ll be asked how the fire started by just about everyone. We don’t have a concrete answer to that in our case, and it holds little importance to us. It came, it destroyed and it went, and the event is in the past and we move forward without it. My advice is to not ask this of others if it does ever happen to anyone around you.

The heat itself will have damaged most of your tech. A Mac survived (woot!) and phones work to an extent (gestures are compromised) but TVs, speakers, decks etc. just get killed from the heat and soot, even when lucky enough to escape the flames (just where soot gets will surprise you!) and hoses.

You’ll never really get the smell of soot out of anything. It’s ingrained into my fingers now (5 weeks on and both thumbs are still black). When you smell smoke as you pass through your streets from purely innocent sources, you’ll get that taste back in your mouth and the panic that something somewhere is burning.

Mental scars on children start to show after a few weeks as they hear car alarms and other sirens, and might not want to be alone anymore. Initially, they can be braver than you, but that will change.

Some personal notes for vinyl collectors:

• Keep every vinyl in a plastic wallet
• Face that wallet inwards so that the smoke has to really work to get inside (i.e. not up)
• Put your 30-year Aphex Twin collection in metal boxes, not wooden

There is a message here beyond the tragedy of the Fire and the value of contents insurance. That message is of digging deep and fighting back. I made a conscious decision 2 days after the fire (whilst staring into a pint of lager in disbelief at my situation) to brute force myself and my family back into society.

This will be a mentally and physically draining journey for you and your family. You will push yourself each day further and further. I am proud of myself for the first time ever… I think. Homeless, jobless and with no possessions for us (passport, shoes, toothbrush, etc.) I fought back…

Within 2 weeks I got my family a stable roof over their heads and security again. I’m employed again and eager to start giving back. The rebuild starts now having laid the foundations. Granted, I relied heavily upon local support and some charity (hard to take) including from my son’s school, but it does boil down somewhat to resourcefulness, and that is what I have always used in my software engineering career.

I’ve sat through many tough interviews and been asked many probing questions, but having got myself and my family through homelessness to a new home and myself working again, I’m not afraid of anything ahead anymore. All of those little questions can be sidelined, pickled, zipped and squashed compared to the challenges we have overcome.

Everything flipped in those few hours.

• It takes weeks to recover your fundamentals (shoes, towels, beds, home, etc.)
• It will take months to rebuild your possessions (TV, sofa, dinner table, games & entertainment, etc.)
• It could take years for everyone to get over your Fire
• Every next day you will be stronger but don’t rush to put yourself in front of pressure again — that is when tears are most likely to surface. 3 weeks is too soon. Build yourself from a month onwards.
• Refresh and Regenerate and get excited by that idea. What has burned has burnt.

Some other little gems of wisdom.

• Don’t wash fire-damaged clothes in soap! The soap breaks up the soot and just makes it worse as it won’t wash it away, just embed it deeper. Instead, dry your precious clothes (because the Fire Brigade probably soaked everything that wasn’t burned) and then decide whether you want to invest time and money in saving them via ozone cleaning.
• This will put a strain on your relationships. You need a sense of humour and also a vast amount of self-endurance. Wash arguments and upsets away quickly as possible because you have to be able to focus on the family recovery.
• Buy lots of the cheapest wet wipes, cloths and towels that you can if you are going to attempt to salvage anything. GLOVES! The gloves that you may see in Salons are perfect. You need cheap and in bulk because you will burn through them (pun intended).
• Take 2–3 weeks off from work after your Fire to lay the foundations again for your family.

Regroup, Refresh and Regenerate.

Fire!