Haley s Inferno. Kassidy Arena December 19th, 2014 Newspaper Feature Writing

Transcription

1 Haley s Inferno Kassidy Arena December 19th, 2014 Newspaper Feature Writing One spark is all it took to ignite the roof of Haley Rezac s childhood home this past Fourth of July. Despite this, Haley and her family remain optimistic. Stuff is just stuff, Haley s father Jeff says. [The fire] helped us refocus on what really matters. (Photo by Kayla Holmes) Something s wrong. This thought wakes Haley Rezac from her deep slumber. Her drowsy eyes scan the dark room, trying desperately to see despite her lack of glasses

2 She hears the sound of feet pounding, almost falling frantically down the stairs. Her door flies open, illuminating her room. Get out, GET OUT, her father Jeff screams. 3:13 am. Haley clutches her multicolored plaid blanket around herself. She runs after her father up the stairs, through the dark house, and out the front door. In seconds, Haley meets her brother Aaron, 13, and sister Lauren, 12, on the sidewalk. Haley s house is engulfed in flames. Where s the dog? Haley asks. No answer. An image of her black and white splotched Mitzi flashes through her thoughts. Jeff runs into the billowing, heavy, dark smoke in order to save the little Shih Tzu Bichon. Haley reaches down to grab her phone only to realize she failed to grab it on the way out. Haley rushes to her neighbor s house and pummels the door with her fist right as her father exits the house with Mitzi, both covered in ashes. After a series of punching thuds, Tammy Griffiths finally answers the door. They probably thought it was a ding-dong-ditch, Haley says. Haley hurries to ask the frazzled woman for her phone. Tammy continues to stare at Haley in confusion. Are you serious? Tammy bites her lip. No, I m kidding, Haley replies sarcastically. Haley gestures toward the now ten-feet-high flames bursting from the roof of her childhood home. This is one of the pictures rescued from the fire. Once above the mantle piece like any other picture, this one is now tattered and burnt around the corners, just another reminder of the fire. (Photo from Haley) An agonizing three minutes on her neighbor s porch is all it takes. A fire truck races around the corner.

3 Blinding lights. Blasting horn. Blaring sirens. It stops abruptly. Men drop from the door of the truck. Fire hoses roll toward the home. Haley s father and another neighbor glance up from garden hoses, unsuccessful in putting out the blazing fire. The exhausted and sweaty men allow the hoses to slip from their fingers as they let the firefighters enter the scene. Haley watches as the yellow-jacketed men enter the flames through a hole in the roof. HER roof. The roof Santa Claus landed his reindeer on. The roof that sheltered her on stormy nights. I instantly knew the whole house was going to be gone, Haley says. She tucks her brown hair, streaked with bright blue, behind her ears. She absently wipes a stray tear from her red-rimmed eyes. Before the fire that day, Haley returned home from working at Hot Topic on the Fourth of July. Her family entertained themselves with fountains and other small fireworks until around 10:15 pm. Defending their choice in cheap explosives, Haley chuckles and says, I make minimum wage, I m not going to spend seventy-five dollars on one firework. But not everyone shared Haley s opinion that night. One of the neighbor s seventy-five dollar fireworks made its way to Haley s roof and quietly began its destruction. According to the National Fire Protection Association, Haley s family isn t alone. In 2011, there were 17,800 fires due to fireworks alone. From the Griffiths porch, Haley listens to the vibrating rings of the cellphone. Finally, Haley hears a quiet shuffling on the line followed by her mother s distant voice. Hello? I need you to not freak out, Haley warns her mother Jennifer. What happened? Jennifer asks, her voice rising. After holding in tears all night, Haley feels hot tears dampen her cheeks. She reaches up to brush them from her pale skin and her fingers notice something missing. Glasses. In all the commotion, it had slipped Haley s mind to pull her glasses off of the night table on her way out. Haley starts sobbing as she tells her mother everything. Thirty minutes pass. Then an hour. The firefighters leave. Haley s home is now a pile of ashes.

4 Aaron rakes up some courage to travel through the blackened house to retrieve his sister s glasses along with other personal belongings. Shoes, pictures, extra clothes fill up his arms. He hesitates as he hands Haley her glasses, You don t want to go in there, he warns. Despite her brother s cautionary advice, Haley pushes past him to investigate for herself. She opens the door, steps in, and is bombarded. Although the dull flashlight illuminates her path, it is difficult to see in the house. Melted rubber and burnt wood fill her nose and mouth. The new Rezac home is currently being built. The outside is repaired while the inside is still under some TLC. Haley bites her lip as if reliving the event. [The house] looked like a movie, it wasn t even real at that point, Haley remembers. It got to be too much. Disoriented, Haley stumbles toward the door. The sopping wet carpet squishes between her toes and up to her ankles with each step. She glances at the fireplace where her first day of school pictures were taken, at the stairs she played on during the house tour when she was six, at the old-fashioned television set. I lost the ghetto box T.V. that I loved with all my heart, Haley says, frowning. By this time, the sun peaks over the horizon. Despite a lack of sleep, Aaron and Jeff pack the car for his baseball tournament and Haley s mother picks up her little sister. Haley jumps into her 2002 Ford Taurus and starts the engine. Driving away from her house, Haley recalls all the good times she had in the house. Haley and her family continue on with their lives almost as if nothing has happened. I didn t even know about it, her friend Allyson Genereux, says, but [Haley] is a pretty emotional person. Genereux assumes Haley tries to hide most of her hardships because she appears so normal at work. If she had told me, I would have told her she can stay at my house, Genereux adds. According to the United States Fire Administration, around 11.7 billion dollars were lost due to home fires. I would say we lost ten percent of the house to fire and smoke and ninety percent to water, Jeff says. Now Haley and her family have now moved into smaller living quarters. We had a tiny house before, Haley says, one bathroom for six people.

5 They now reside in Autumn Grove Apartments, and Haley continues to work at Hot Topic. They strive to return to the ways things were before, but it remains a difficult task. Jeff says it was one of those events that turned his families world upside down. I literally watched the house I lived in for eleven years burn down, Haley struggles to say. Despite watching a fire consume her childhood home, Haley chooses to focus on the positives. Haley claps her hands together, smiling, But our projected move back in date is November 20th. It turns out Haley s first day back in her home was December 18th. Either way, Jeff points out the most important fact. Stuff is just stuff, he says. [The fire] helped us refocus on what really matters. Watching all of her memories fall to ashes has burned a lesson into Haley s head: never take anything for granted.