Essay of My Wonderful Life, A Fire of My Memory

It was the happening when I was eleven years-old primary school student. As it was the night of a cold season in December, our family have already slept at 11 o'clock. I also fell asleep, but I felt something bright on the glass door. I happened to open my eyes and I was very surprised, because the glass was under fire. I thought that next room was burning. Soon I opened up the door. However the room was as usual. I couldn't understand what the fire that I just saw was. Then I turned my face back and found that there was a fire burning up to the sky in outside. The glass of the door seemed to reflect this fire.

I shouted to my father, "Daddy! Wake up! It is fire! Outside." He soon woke up and watched the fire through the window. He said, "The burning house is the one which is one block away. I will see it. You and Mammy should correct valuables and prepare for evacuation." He rushed to the burning place. As I was directed by him, I took the valuables in my house and helped my sisters to change their clothes with my mother.

After finishing this, I was worried about my father and the fire. Then I said to mother that I would go out for seeing the fire. Just like as my father I rushed to the burning house. Nowadays all houses are regulated to be fire-free structure. However most of houses in these days were made of wood and paper only and they were easily burn out. When I arrived at the burning spot, flames were soaring up the black sky with making noises. Whole house was covered by the flame of orange color. I felt that fire was really terrible.

As this fire had already covered whole house, we could do nothing. A few minutes later, the fire fighters came. However the fire engine at that time was not so effective. Therefore firefighters were spreading water on the roofs of surrounding houses. Luckily the burning house was quite far from other houses. So we needed not to worry about extension of the fire.

I found my father among the fire watchers and I approached to him. We watched the fire. Soon the color of the fire changed from orange to black red. We thought it was almost finishing. My father and I turned our faces and walked to our house. When we reached to our house. he found that there was the luggage at the entrance. He said, "Is this all valuables of my house? It is too small!" We laughed and we could release our tension.

(October 23, 2005)