Bye Bye House Part 2: Burnin' Down the House

In my last post, I shared the beginning of the house burn day.  After all of the fire departments went through their practice stations, the order was given to let the fire go.  This is when things got really exciting! 

 The fire first overtook the front room.  Easy to see why they wanted the windows boarded up.

  

Then the front window (which wasn't boarded) blew out, and the boards started to come down on the other windows.

Then the fire started to spread down the hall to other rooms. 

Note the fire coming out of the roof vents...

A picture of the front of the house - fire fighters looking on. 

Within a frighteningly short time the front room was gone.

This cracked me up. 

Many of the fire fighters posed for pictures in front of the house.

I guess it's the only time they can be proud that a house is burning to the ground on their watch!

One of the fire fighters rescued the smoke detector for us. Funny.

The last to go was the carport. 

All of the pallets came in handy to build enough of a fire to take it down.

Once the carport was down, all of the fire fighters left.

The house was still burning, but due to the wet ground they weren't worried.

They promised to come by every hour or two to make sure everything was ok.

Since they weren't worried enough to stay, we decided to follow their lead and go to lunch.

 

Here's a view from the front of the property.

Looking at the smoking pile of rubble where the house used to be.

 

When we returned from lunch the house was still burning.

Note the blasted, melted grass stuck into the ground.

A testament to the power of the fire.

After watching the fire for a while longer, we decided to call it a day.

When we returned the next day, the fire was out, but one of the decks was still smoldering.

This deck was attached to the house, but was so wet from all of the rain that it never really burned.

Gotta love the Pacific NW.

Here's how the rest of the house looked the day after.

This is the same side/room that was in the first picture.

Only the chimney remained.