Not quite my neighbor, but two houses down from me. Completely exploded, burned to ashes in just a few minutes. Caught the neighboring house on fire as well, and burned it to the ground.

Definitely an arson, and not an accident. No idea why it just exploded like that, but they are still investigating. No leads either.

My wife and I were just discussing prior to the incident how quiet our street is, and then BLAM, a home explodes.

Our neighbor had 3 minutes from the explosion to when the roof collapsed on her home. She made it out, but isnt that scary?

What would you take if you had 3 minutes to get out of your house?

We actually had the same thing a year ago. Only it wasn't arson but suicide. Someone rigged the gas and blew themselves up. Including the 3 surrounding appartments. Demolished half of the flat. Luckily no one was home except the suicider (is that a word?). We weren't affected being on the other side of the road, but bizarre nontheless.

If I would have the precense of mind I'd take our back-up server Sounds horrible, but all our pictures are on there, all our financial information, all contact information for friends and family. It's the one thing that has everything I need and a lot of things I want.

I'd grab my laptop and my purse and leave the door open for the cats and hope they followed.

I need to put together a fire-box for some of the important papers, I guess.

I have a fireproof lockbox in the closet. I keep SS, birth certificate, passport, checkbook, etc... in it. So, those would be OK.

When the explosion happened, at the moment I just grabbed my baby girl and wife and got out. Afterwards, I thought about all the stuff I should have grabbed before leaving.

Im going to make an emergency bag, with everything I would need in case of another emergency. Then I can just grab it and go. 3 minuts isnt much time, especially when you are in a stressful situation. It will probably go unused now, but nevertheless.

In situations like this, there's no time to think, just act.

Stick with your instincts, it knows better.

You did exactly right, the child and your wife, then out.

Everything else can be replaced.
The emergency will almost always not be convenient to get to if you do have one. That's just life.

As long as you got the wife and kid, your good.

You just made it one. That the beautiful thing about English. You can make up words willy nilly and no one cares. Oh, and you can verb anything.


I started getting concerned about that kind of thing about a year ago. It wasn't that I was worried about my neighbor's house exploding but instead I travel a lot and am to the point that I use just two laptops. Plus I work as a university so my work laptop is vulnerable if I leave my office briefly. Anyway, I set up a cloud system with Dropbox, another service, and some free software so that all of my data is shared among machines and backed up multiple places. I keep a final backup on a large USB drive. So I wouldn't bother to grab computers.

I've got most important documents scanned as well.

Truthfully, I think the list of evacuees can stop with people and pets.

Same for me. All my important documents are scanned and backed up via cloud and USB. Nothing else is worth risking loss of life or limb to try to save.

My cats and my neighbor's cats (we live in a duplex). If I have presence of mind, my purse and cell phone.

During the really bad storms last year, we had to start thinking about what to do if we needed to evacuate. My emergency kit contained cat food, kitty litter and bottled water. Computer files never even occurred to me. Stuff can be replaced. My cats cannot.

None that I've heard. Im 90% sure it was the homeowner, but its difficult to prove something like that.

All circumstancial evidence points to him. The law may never convict him, but Ill be sure to give him plenty dirty looks, and he definitely wont be borrowing any tools!

If it was done on purpose, I'm gonna tie up my neighbor to the nearest post and call the cops, slap him a bit while I'm waiting.

Be careful, I'm an English teacher!

If there is the person I loved in the room, I will drag him or her to run out of the room inmediately without thinking about the money or certificates.

I feel sad to hear that. Arson is a difficult case.

Hope all things will be fine soon, in situation like this only one thing is important that is our Presence of mind.

I would take:

1) kids

2) finacé

That is enough for my happiness.

3) if I have time (no risk) I would take my small server with digital pictures and personal info, but most i backuped at other location so not that important.

4) If I can do it with no risk what so ever, I would take wallet and cellphone so I can identify myself, pay for hotel and call my insurance company.