Jay McCarthy, who writes the blog Makeoutcity, is Boston’s deepest blogger. He’s also Boston’s newest homeless blogger: lightning struck his family’s house and it burned to the ground early Sunday morning.
It is 7:08 AM on Sunday, May 23rd 2004. I am
sitting in my car behind my burning house. Just about two hours ago my
house was struck by lighting and I woke up to the sound of the fire
alarms. Although, at the time I did not know about the lighting.
As I waited in bed for the alarms to go off,
I thought about how annoying it is when this happens. For some reason
over the past few months they have turned on a few times, it never
really happened before so I wasn’t used to the deafening sound.
I heard my parents walking around and I
assumed that they were trying to turn them off. I wasn’t sure how this
was done so I didn’t think anything was amiss about it taking so long.
About 5 or 10 minutes later I started
smelling smoke and heard my dad looking in the attic outside my room.
It was now he started screaming, “The house is REALLY on fire. Get
anything you can and get out!” He said this as he walked down the
stairs and when he came back in after putting something outside.
I was a bit panicked and shaken but I grabbed
my backpack and threw my computers in it and put on some pants. I
should have probably put on the pants with my wallet in them, but for
some reason I didn’t. And I should have probably got a jacket as well
seeing as it is so cold now.
Everyone in his family escaped unharmed, but
right now, they only have what they were able to carry out of the house
and the clothes on their backs.
Although insurance will cover most of his
family’s costs, there will be a lot that it won’t cover. If you’ve got
a PayPal account and a little extra cash to spare, you might want to send some money using the PayPal donation site kindly set up by Boston blogger Lisa Williams.
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