A Real Christmas Miracle.

Have you ever stopped to think what you would run and save from the flames if you returned home to find your house on fire? This question was once asked of a well known photographer
 Don Mc. Cullin. He was asked which of all of his famous images would he save, he replied the ones that were took by his children, and the ones that reminded him of home!
As a professional firefighter the correct answer would be never go back into a burning building! This advise is given out every day on our TVs and in our school visit's to young faces looking up with questions. "what about my play station, my grannies old doll, my gold fish,cat, baby brother, etc etc, all the things that are important to young minds. We answer back in a straight forward slightly abrupt way, these can be replaced but you can't! There is nothing more important to your parents than you!"
But what if your kids are grown up and have flown the coop, what if all you have left are memories and keep sakes, what then?
It was 9.45pm when we got the call on Christmas Eve, Domestic Fire-Persons Reported! When we arrived at the farmstead one section of the single story cottage was well alight, I could see two men wrestling with an elderly Lady and pulling her back from the door. Thick black smoke was erupting from under the tiles and spewing from the open windows, and a familiar orange glow could be seen from the end room. Mary had been at Christmas mass, her youngest daughter was over for the holidays and had arrived earlier that day as a surprise. She was calling to us and directing us up the boreen, face blackened, her hair disheveled with tears making silvery tracks down her cheeks. Everyone was out Thank god for that! I set my crew to task fighting the fire Breathing apparatus on. Mary and her daughter had arrived back from mass to find Mary's bedroom alight and fire spreading along the corridor of her family home. She had done her best to get in to save her memories! The family albums in the Dinning room, and the watch her Husband had given to her for there first Christmas together, which she kept in the drawer under the mirror on her sideboard in her bedroom. But she had been beaten back from the smoke and then held back by the neighbours who had given them a lift back from the church. Threaded onto the strap of the watch was her Wedding Ring, Engagement ring and her Eternity ring which she could no longer wear because of swollen arthritic fingers. Between gulps of oxygen from beneath the mask she grabbed my hand,
"The house can go! But please try and get these for me, they are all I have left," " promise me" she said, her grasp surprisingly strong for her age. I met her daughter to get a rough lay out of the building, she was in shock and spoke to quickly to understand, however once calmed down, 'I try and do a good impersonation of calm!' Which I have found can spread like a smile once you can achieve it, she spoke clear and well giving me a good description of all of what her elderly mother was after, and I promised that we would do our best but asked her to be strong for her mother and be prepared for the worst. It was a good half hour before my men reported that the fire was out, we had stopped the spread and contained it to two rooms at the end of the house, but there was still a lot of smoke trapped in the attic space and in the other rooms. Mary refused to leave the scene until she had her things, my men were busy clearing out the debris from the fire room, mary's bedroom! As they shovelled out the smouldering mess I set up two men with a small hose to clean through the blackened fused detritus to search for gold. Mary's daughter got on her hands and knees and joined in with the search. It would take a miracle, the room was destroyed and everything in it, the bed springs and old copper bed stead were the only recognisable objects left in the room, even these were blackened and misshaped by the heat of the fire.
Meanwhile I entered the building to set up a 'Venting fan' to help with the smoke. Every room I entered was completely covered in a thick black residue that stuck to the fixtures and fittings like tar, and ran down the walls like condensation, A sight only too familiar to victims of a fire, and surgeons of lung cancer victims! The heat in the subsequent rooms was such that it melted the polystyrene ceiling tiles of the sitting room and had melted the fuse box of the mains electric supply. Anything made of plastic above head hight in most rooms had begun to melt. The lamp shades, curtain hooks, picture frames. I held little hope for the photo albums. As I approached what should have been the Dinning room/best room I feared the worst, the door was blackened and the years of leaded paint had begun to blacken and blister. The door opened into a pristine room, the table set for Christmas, the tree resplendent in the corner, and sat there in the middle of the table the photo album opened at a black and white square format image of the whole family taken out side the house on the door step, a younger Mary holding her new born Daughter who's father took one look at, and named her after her mother, Mary. That was twenty eight years ago Mary senior explained to me between tears of joy! A little time later my driver called me over and handed me a blackened mass of burnt leather, but attached to it was the gleam of silver and gold times three, and the inscription on the back of the watch read, after a rub with a damp cloth,
'To my darling Mary, on our first Christmas' Both Mary's began to cry as Mary senior clutched them to her breast, It has been reported that even I had a tear in my eye, but it was just the effects of the smoke!!!

Miracle's like this don't happen every day, but this one happened for real on Christmas Eve, and despite the fire we were able to give Mary the best present that night, her Memories.