These Days of Awe

B’rosh hashanah yikatevun,
uv’yom tzom kippur yechatemun…

On Rosh HaShana it is Written, and on Yom Kippur it is Sealed…

This could have been our whole house.

I really wish this wasn’t the first picture of my house that I was posting here. But at 3:40pm yesterday, as Larry and his parents and I were sitting outside grilling a late lunch, our smoke detector system started blaring. First one alarm on the second floor. Then another. Then all three on the third floor in rapid succession, the shrill sounds bouncing off of our hardwood floors and echoing through the house.

We had left the front and unit doors open. The grill was smoking heavily. Ah, the smoke must have gone up into the house, we all thought. I went inside and immediately knew something was very wrong. The hallway smelled like burning rubber.

On Rosh HaShana it is Written, and on Yom Kippur it is Sealed:
how many will pass from the earth and how many will be created;
who will live and who will die…

I immediately checked the kitchen: a smell, but less so. The stove was off. Dining room: stronger smell, but no candles were burning. I cut through the hallway and saw the smoke pouring from the light switch in the living room. I screamed down the stairs to Larry: “Something’s actually on fire! I think it’s the outlet in the living room!” I dialed 911.

…who by water and who by fire…

Mass State Police transferred me to the Salem Fire Department. My voice was calm. “My name is Keiko Zoll. I live at [address] in Salem. There is an electrical fire in the wall of our house. The fire is on the second floor inside the wall, there’s a lot of smoke, no visible flames, and no one is injured.”

“Ma’am, please stay on the line.”

In the background I can hear Larry and his dad shouting over the din of the smoke alarms. “Dad, this is NOT good.” “Cut the power in the breaker box!” The thunder of Larry’s steps as he ran down the stairs outside and to the cellar, that acrid burnt electrical smell and white smoke wafting into the dining room. I’m staring out the french doors in the dining room, overlooking a century old cemetery just feet away from the back of our house.

“Ok ma’am, we’re sending the Fire Department now.”

I hear the police sirens first, followed by the deep blasting horn of the fire truck. The fire station is only three-quarters of a mile away.

…who by sword, who by beast, who by famine, who by thirst, who by storm, who by plague, who by strangulation, and who by stoning…

Larry had run back upstairs. I told him the fire department was on their way. He and his dad were doing something with the outlet on the wall. I shouted at them to stop and come outside, but they didn’t listen. I couldn’t deal with it all and went outside to wait for the fire truck.

Earlier in the day, Larry and his dad were working on moving an outlet into a closet. It’s kind of a long story, but in order to wall mount our TV above the fireplace, we’d need to move an outlet to a closet just to the right of the hearth. Larry’s parents were in town for the weekend, so it was a good father-son home improvement project and both Larry and his dad know what they’re doing, so it was no big deal.

A police car arrived first and directed the fire truck to come the wrong way up our one-way street since it was so narrow. I sent them right upstairs. Firemen in full gear ran up into our house. I ran in after them when Larry didn’t come down. Smoke was still filling the rooms, so I ran upstairs to the third floor and saw that there was smoke in all the upstairs bedrooms. I began opening skylights and hollering for Larry to come upstairs. When we saw how much smoke had gone upstairs, we both started to freak out. I started zipping all of our suitcases shut in the bedroom (we still haven’t unpacked our clothes) so they wouldn’t get anymore smoke damage. The linens on the bed were a lost cause. The smoke and that awful rubber smell started bothering me so much that I had to get out of the house. As I ran down the stairs, that’s when I heard the axe.

The firemen began axing into the walls of our house.

…who will rest and who will wander, who will live in harmony and who will be harried, who will enjoy tranquility and who will suffer, who will be impoverished and who will be enriched, who will be degraded and who will be exalted…

Our neighbors lined the street. I got to meet our next door neighbor for the first time. My mother-in-law hugged me as I started to sob, the sounds of the axe growing louder and louder. I felt like the street was turning upside down from underneath my feet. “I have to get my inhaler,” I managed to say between sobs. I got into my car and pulled out my little red lifesaver from the glove box. One puff and hold for a count of ten – my ears were buzzing as the kaleidoscope of color and sound around me overwhelmed my senses – I could feel my lungs expanding, normal breath restored.

I didn’t know what to do next, so I did the only thing I could think of: I called my mom.

After assuring her that everyone was safe and choking back sobs (feeling almost ashamed that we hadn’t even had the house more than 10 days and yet here we were calling the fire department because we’d nearly burned down our completely wooden historical home) my mom started filing in the “I should probably know this now that I’m a grown-up” gap for me: call the insurance company. Who was our home inspector? Did we need a hotel for the night? Should she send money?

I started to calm down. Things started to make a little more sense. I went back inside to check in on Larry.

…but repentance, prayer, and charity remove the severity of the Decree!

I couldn’t believe what I was looking at: the ceiling and wall of our living room was axed in, debris all over the floor. The scorch marks were telling on the wall, and it wasn’t until I took a flashlight to the ceiling beam that we saw just how bad it could have been: the ceiling beam was scorched black. Larry had called an electrician to come out and as we looked through the debris like CSI investigators, we could piece together that the fire wasn’t because Larry or his dad did anything wrong that afternoon.

According to the Fire Chief, it was a matter of time before this would happen based on how the wires were fried. There were no flames (and thankfully, no water was needed to put it out) but a short circuit caused the wires to superheat and start scorching the wood inside the walls. When Larry went to check the breaker box with the electrician, the wire was fried right down to the breaker box. The issue is that the breaker failed to trip when it detected a short circuit. Moving the outlet in that room hadn’t caused the issue, but merely brought it to light earlier. From the intensity of the char, it looks like the bulk of the fire was between the ceiling light and the light switch. Inside the outlet box, the wires were still in tact with no heat damage, so it wasn’t anything they did to cause it.

In fact, the whole issue started when I noticed that the power wasn’t on in the dining room after they had finished working. Larry went to turn the breaker back on since they were finished working on the electrical part and felt a strange hum before it kicked back on. That hum was the short. The breaker should have kicked back over but didn’t. Thus: fire caused by faulty breaker. Maybe 3 minutes had passed after Larry switched the breaker back on and when the smoke detectors started going off. My calling 911 and Larry shutting off the breaker as quick as we did saved us from a lot more damage.

We got lucky, the Fire Chief told us. Had this been three in the morning instead of three in the afternoon, we probably would have died in our sleep from carbon monoxide poisoning.

. . .

Servpro is here now, taking pictures and measurements. Our clothing and linens will be sent to dry cleaners. They’ll sponge out the scorch marks that came up through the 2nd floor ceiling and onto the walls and floor of the 3rd floor. They cleaned all the debris and sealed off the walls last night with plastic sheeting, and ran fans and deodorizers all night. The insurance adjuster will be here later today and the electrician back tomorrow.

As frightening as this experience was, as costly and time-consuming as replacement of walls and ceilings may be… it’s just stuff. It’s just things. It’s just money.

I’d rather be here to tell you about this myself than be just another fire mortality statistic.

This Friday is Yom Kippur. These days between Rosh HaShanah and Yom Kippur are the holiest days of the year: the Days of Awe. As the Unetaneh Tokef prayer I’ve woven throughout this post illustrates (and is spoken on Rosh HaShanah), G-d writes down all of our fates for the year in the Book of Life.

“On Rosh HaShanah it is Written and on Yom Kippur it is Sealed.”

Despite all the headache and stress that is forthcoming, we were extended a huge blessing yesterday.

These Days of Awe, indeed.