The Day I Smelled Smoke

7/18/2019 (Permalink)

A house fire in the local neighboring community of New Port Richey, caused by an Electrical Malfunction.

It was an early Tuesday morning, sleep still in my eyes, trying to wake up with my first cup of freshly brewed coffee. Getting ready to do some work that morning, I moved across the room to crack the window in the living room. Pushing open the open the window I prepared to be greeted with sounds of birds, a crisp morning breeze, even the smell of the newly bloomed flowers right outside the screen.

Instead, the stench of smoke abruptly entered into my nose. This thick smoke woke me up in an instant to the realization something very, very close to here was on fire. Nearly dropping my cup of coffee, I ran to my front door to look outside. Running through the yard in my Port Richey neighborhood, I saw what I that pit in my stomach sensed. A house a street over from mine was in flames.

When your family’s business is cleanup for disasters like this one, seeing a house affected by a fire is a regular occurrence. My family has been lucky enough to not have this experience happen to us, however countless times we have cried with families as they faced the journey and process a house fire brings. But on the other end of things, even more times have we shed tears with families months later after we restored and rebuilt their home.

The sad truth is that fires are beasts of disasters and can damage anything in their path. That Tuesday ended with the human family members being okay, but they lost two dogs and nearly all of their possessions. No human was harmed but that does not mean this event went without heartache.

Before that early Tuesday morning it became a norm of mine to see the physical loss a family encounters when their property gets damaged due to a fire. But after witnessing first-hand what occurs in the moments before a family calls SERVPRO of Hernando County, I will never forget. My eyes have forever been opened to the emotional stressors that one endeavors the minute a fire ignites. These stressors that do not just go away, ones that may last for many, many years.

Our neighbors who lost everything was unpreventable as the fire was caused by an electrical malfunction, something that can happen at any times. Many stories like these happen each year and one cannot plan for an event like this to occur, but they can prepare. As much as I wish I hadn’t smelled that smoke that early morning, it has given me a new perspective of how to service our clients with compassion and empathy during such a tough process.