Essay My House Was Destroyed by Fire

Fire trucks kept coming and neighbors gathered around to lend a hand. Many people brought blankets, offered hot chocolate, and a place to keep warm. They were all so kind, but I couldn’t take my eyes away from the house. Mom talks to us on the phone while she’s on her way home from work in Des Moines. My sister and I hug each other in disbelief and cry. We watch the firefighters throw everything out of my bedroom window, which is in the basement.

On March 13, 1900, a tenement building in New York City caught fire, killing fourteen Italian immigrants. The poorly constructed frame building housed three stories of tenement quarters, with ten apartments per floor. The rooms were five by ten feet, separated only by flimsy half-inch thick boards. With just one exit through the entrance of the building, and that only by way of a 42-inch wide stairway, their only escape was destroyed, leaving eleven families of “caged victims beyond help.” People became so desperate that they jumped from upper balconies as the firemen on the scene struggled to control the flames. The top floor proved to be the deadliest, with a victim in nearly all ten rooms. After the arrest of a suspect and an

As I took my first step out of the doorway, I felt the ice below my feet and heard the wind whispering in

The winter is surely when the novella’s tone goes downhill. As the nights grow longer, and the days grow colder, the mood of this book darkens . “ The sky is an empty hopeless gray and gives the impression that this is its eternal shade. Winter’s occupation seems to have conquered, overrun and destroyed everything…” This quote shows the change in mood that winter has brought.

brutal winter. “Many mornings he had waked to find a coating of white on the cabin roof. Today

As winter continues, Haskell examines the newly fallen snow during the early moments of sunrise. While most people find beauty in the large blanket of snow that

There were six fire trucks in my driveway from all different townships. We ended up having to park down the street in my neighbors yard. My dogs were at Kevin’s house for the time being. I noticed my parents were already outside, so I went up to them. The flames were mostly gone by the time I had showed up and they were trying to get things cooled down and cleaned up from all the sludge that had become of it. My grandparents got out to see how everything was going, and then hours later, when the firefighters had declared it safe enough, my family and I went into the house we had all spent ten years of our life in. The house I walked into was one I did not recognize. Everything was out of place and soaking wet from all the water they had to use to put out the fire. Even the items that weren’t burnt were still damaged from either the smoke or all the water. Luckily, my door had been closed to my room, which had saved some things. Unluckily, most of my personal possessions were ruined. My clothes, my journals I had kept up with, and most of the things I held dear to me were gone in a

Upon opening the back door, Vasquez observed that there was just enough space to squeeze past the refrigerator blocking the exit. The air smelled of burned rubber and melted wires; a damp ash covered the ground, sticking to their boots. In the kitchen, Vasquez and Fogg discerned only smoke and heat damage—a sign that the fire had not originated there—and so they pushed deeper into the nine-hundred-and-seventy-five-square-foot building. A central corridor led past a utility room and the master bedroom, then past a small living room, on the left, and the children’s bedroom, on the right, ending at the front door, which opened onto the porch. Vasquez tried to take in everything, a process that he compared to entering one’s mother-in-law’s house for the first time: “I have the same curiosity.”

Brother Malcolm turned the doorknob and escaped the deadly outdoors, just in time to escape the cacophonous boom that shook the door almost from its hinges. He hurried into the common room to see the cold embers in the fireplace. Relieving himself of his heavy

The smoke smell started to get stronger like everyone gathered around us was smoking a cigarette, but when I lifted my head back to look at the firefighters they were all ducking as more black smoke poured out of my house like a giant chimney. I waited anxiously for the firefighters to actually put out the

“Trees towered upwards with bending boughs holding the weight of the freshly fallen snow. A blanket of snow hid away all traces of animal life although you could hear the krawing of a murder of crows. Their hidden presence was foreboding to all men who passed through the forest. It was a signal of another starved beast returning to the earth. Even the most frivolous found the endless winter to be a burden.

The reader can feel the anguish and utter fear that the nuns felt as they desperately tried to save the children 's under their care (Cowan and Kuenster 13). The terror and panic of parents who rushed to the scene with ladders that turned out to be too short as they reached out to try and rescue the petrified fourth and fifth graders. The reader also gets to read about the helpless veteran firemen who watched the children lit up when they could do nothing to help. In all these, the authors attribute to small mistakes, confusion, and complications that delayed or frustrated rescue attempts. They also include interviews with the survivors of the fire and discuss the rumors surrounding the question of how the fire started.

The wind is harsh and piercing as the gusts reach up to 50 mph. Even layers upon layers of clothing do very little to protect people from the harshness of the cold unrelenting wind. The snow on the ground would blind them as they trekked across the barren wastelands of snow and wind. As they all began to peal back their layers of masks to speak, the pain of the fierce wind immediately ran across their faces. It felt as if a stroke of lightning had ran across their faces and down their throats with every breath of the icy wind. Each one speaks with the same raspy bark from the brutal cold ravaging their vocal chords. The wind laced its way through their clothes like it was not even there and chilled them all to the bones.

“We received no food. We lived in snow; it took the place of bread. The days resembled the nights, and the nights left in our souls the dregs of their darkness. The train rolled slowly, often halted for a few hours, and continued. It never stopped snowing. We remained lying on the floor for days and nights, one on top of the other, never uttering a word. We were nothing but frozen

Those warm summer nights after long days of camp were greatly anticipated events back then. My cousin and I itched with repressed energy throughout the long bus ride from various tri-state area attractions. We couldn’t wait to get home and see what types of shenanigans we could get into. We couldn’t wait to slide down the steep, blue-carpeted staircase on our bottoms, and then on our stomachs. Most of all, we couldn’t wait to go down to the basement. The basement was better than a toy store. Yes, the old-fashioned milk chute in the kitchen wall was enchanting, and the laundry chute was fun because it was big enough to throw down my sisters stuffed companions, so my cousin could catch them below in the laundry room, as our voices echoed up and down the chute. But the basement was better than all of these, better even than sliding down those stairs on rug-burned bottoms.