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By Haley Blanton

Guest Columnist

I was 8 years old, and I still remember the night like it was yesterday — March 5, 2015.

It was a cold day for March. We had a bad winter, and it had just snowed the night before. I remember that since I had to jump off my back porch window. I was barefoot in the snow. I think it’s the little things about that horrible day that still get to me.

I grew up in “the camp,” which is actually a little neighborhood that loops into a circle at Mary Alice off KY 72. I lived way up past the neighbors, up a holler in the mountains. Three houses used to be up there, but now there’s only one still standing.

One of the houses that is gone now was mine. I lost the house that I grew up in due to a fire. The worst part was my family and I were in it. It was a tragedy. The only good thing was that we all survived. Even though I lost everything, I still had my family.

I remember waking up to my brother yelling at my mom since she was asleep and he smelled smoke and assumed it was our coal stove (that we used to heat the house). Eight-year-old me tried to go back to bed. I didn’t know why, but at the time, I couldn’t go back to sleep. So I stayed lying there with my eyes closed. I waited for my mom to get up. When she got up, of course, I didn’t open my eyes. I listened.

I heard her walk to our coal stove. She didn’t say anything. Then I heard her walk through the house. She then ran back, yelling that, “The house is on fire.” The fear, along with the dark smoke, was in the air. Panic rose in all of us, trying to figure out a way to get out. The smoke was making it hard to breathe and see. I couldn’t see my hand, and I was holding it in front of my face. We finally decided to go for the window to the back porch since, at the time, our back door was cluttered. My brother went first, then my mom, me, and my dad was the last one out. We jumped off the back porch. The heat from the fire was so hot that I had to go down the hillside so I didn’t get burnt.

I ran next door to my uncle’s house. He was in his driveway at the time. I told him what was happening, and he ran over to help in any way he could in that moment of chaos. I saw things no 8-year-old should have that day. I watched my house burn down from my uncle’s bedroom window. I watched one of my dog’s collapse from smoke inhalation. I saw the firefighters put a black tarp over his lifeless body.

The firefighters did everything they could, but by the time they got there it was too late. One of the firefighters said, “In my 10 years of working, I’ve never seen a fire not only be that hot, but burn from the front of the place.” Everyone was surprised that we lived but glad we survived.

Fifteen days later, I turned 9.