Would you risk your life to save a stranger’s life from a fire?
Would you risk it again if your first effort was unsuccessful?
Would you risk your life if it would also cost you tens of thousands of dollars?
Would you risk your life if it would cause trauma to your family?
Unfortunately for me, and my family, these questions are no longer hypothetical.
Last month (as I type this), I ended up having to answer the first two questions in literally a matter of seconds, as the house next to ours erupted in an inferno with a speed and intensity I had only ever seen in movies.
For the first two, my decision was a conscious “yes”. As a result, my neighbour who may not otherwise have survived is safe.
However, what I did not realise at the time was that I also answered yes to the last two questions. And now I have to confront the thoughts that pursuing F.I.R.E. may have actually made the trauma worse than it would otherwise have been.
And that leads me to question if pursuing F.I.R.E. is still the right thing to do.
How did it get to this?
On the night of the fire, my family and I literally ran out of our house in just the clothes we were wearing as the flames we had just noticed seconds before rapidly took hold and started to fan across the mere one metre gap that separated our roofs.
Immediately after evacuating I learned our neighbour was trapped in her backyard. With her house ablaze and impassable the only way she could get out was over a two-meter wall that separated our back yards.
So, I had a choice to make. Go back through our house to our backyard to try to rescue her or leave with my family and hope the emergency services would arrive soon enough to rescue her. However, given the speed and intensity of the fire and no signs of emergency services, I decided I had to try to rescue her.
My wife had the foresight to get our car to take us to safety. However, I told her to take our family and leave but that I had to try and rescue our neighbour, and I then ran back into our house.
My first attempt was unsuccessful. The noise, smoke and flames meant I could not see or hear my neighbour and, evidently, she could not hear or see me. I ran back to the street hoping she had found another way out, but she was still trapped, and there was still no sign of emergency services.
So, I again had to choose whether to try risk my own life to try and rescue her or go to my family.
The flames had intensified, and explosions and smoke were making the situation more difficult than before, and I realised this was quite possibly a last-chance opportunity to rescue her.
I chose to go back again.
This time I was determined to stay until I found her, yelling as loud as I could and using the torch function of my phone in the hope she would see that if she could not hear me. In that time, and I do not know long it was, it seemed like there was just silence and darkness punctuated only by my yells and the light of my torch.
Thankfully, she heard me this time and I also managed to hear her response, albeit barely. But at that stage we could not see each other and so she did not know which way to go.
I told her to look for the light of my phone and head towards it. After what seemed like an eternity of back and forth yelling, she emerged out of the darkness, and scrambling in barefoot managed to climb to a point where I could get her over the wall.
At this point the silence and darkness seemed to vanish in an instant, replaced by the glow of flames through smoke and the roar of the fire. I suddenly became very aware the flames were literally just a few feet from us. It no longer seemed safe to exit through my house, so I unlocked the gate on the other side of me house and we ran to the street.
I then went to find my family.
When a thought becomes a memory
As I could not get my phone to work, I started running up and down the street yelling for my family but could not find them. At that point, I was at least comforted by the knowledge my wife had taken the rest of our family to safety.
It was not until around an hour later we finally got in contact, and that was when I started learning of the trauma they had to endure.
What I did not know was that my wife had not heard what I said before I ran back into the house on my first rescue attempt.
Despite literally being only a few feet apart, and me yelling at the top of my voice, the noise of the flames and explosions, combined with the stress, confusion and adrenaline my wife and I were both experiencing, meant that while my wife knew I was trying to tell her something she did not hear it. Instead, she had turned away just before I had run back to the house, and when she turned back I was gone, and the fire was getting worse. Thankfully, she had the composure to get the rest of our family to safety before trying to find me.
But a terrible combination of events meant that for almost an hour my family did not know if I was alive or not. They suspected I had gone back into the house but did not know for sure , and certainly did not know why. And for some time, they worried whether it was something they had said, or not said, that caused me to not come with them and go into to the house.
Thankfully, they now know I was safe, and my decision to go back into the house was not because of anything they did or didn’t do or say. Their thoughts of the worst-case scenarios were just that – thoughts. Instead, we are now all together and unharmed.
At least that is what I initially thought and told everyone.
However, I am now very deliberate when people ask to say that we are PHYSICALLY unharmed.
There are not enough words to describe, and I am not a skilled enough wordsmith, to fully convey just how traumatic that time was for them. But what I do now believe is that a thought as distressing as what they endured, and experienced for as long as they had to, can effectively become a like a memory of what did happen rather than what was only what may have happened.
When pursuing F.I.R.E. hurts your family
Obviously as the fire was raging, and I was deciding whether to rescue the neighbour or go with my family, my F.I.R.E. goals were not even the remotest of considerations.
However, the day after the fire, as we surveyed the damage, quantifying potential costs of the fire, and the impact on my F.I.R.E. goals suddenly became more feasible. My thoughts switched to questions that would help work out the impact. Was our insurance up to date? Estimates of the damage were over $100,000. Did our insurance also our possessions? Perhaps another $30,000 worth of damage. And what about the costs of accommodation while our house was being repaired? It seemed likely we would not be able to return for months.
Then I was also struck by two perverse realisations. Firstly, my decision to rescue our neighbour could likely end up costing my family a lot of extra money, potentially over $100,000. And by making the “smart” F.I.R.E. decision of increasing our excess to minimise our premiums, the initial upfront cost to us would be thousands of dollars more than if I had left our insurance untouched.
This of course played on my mind even further.
There are times when quantification of financial impacts is impossible. But more importantly there are times when it is irrelevant, and just a distraction from what is important.
The days after the fire was one of those times, and unfortunately my F.I.R.E. obsession meant I failed to see this and so failed to focus on my family and their trauma and so failed them. This instead made the trauma worse as they had to almost fight to get my focus from the F.I.R.E. impact, to the more important fire impact.
I now had a truly sickening thought. I was pursuing F.I.R.E. because I thought it would be good for my family, but what it seemed that it had actually caused more harm than good at the time when they needed me the most.
Questioning everything
I thought risking my life to rescue a stranger was the right thing to do. But how can causing this level of trauma, and potentially financial cost, to my family be the “right thing”.
I pursued F.I.R.E because I thought it would be good for my family. But this experience made we wonder if it instead blinds you to what is good for your family.
I started this blog so I could share things I learned about F.I.R.E. in a generally light-hearted and irreverent way. But this post is obviously neither light-hearted nor irreverent.
I hoped this blog would encourage people to pursue F.I.R.E.as I believed it was a good goal. But can I still do this when I know pursuing F.I.R.E. can have detrimental consequences.
What I would not change
My decision to rescue my neighbour rather than go with my family put my life at risk. And by a bizarre set of circumstances could also cost us significantly more financially than if I had elected to leave rather than stay and help.
However , I still believe it was the right decision and I have to admit I would do it again even knowing these risks and outcomes. I have always firmly believed most people are good and in a similar position would risk their life to save a stranger’s if they thought it was feasible.
What I could not change
It is hard for me knowing that a by-product of my decision to rescue our neighbour was the trauma to my family. It is probably harder for them to understand that if the same situation arose, I would make the same choice.
However, I did try everything to let them know what I was doing. It was a wicked set of circumstances that meant the trauma for them while we were apart was so bad. I hope that in time they will see that and as we heal, maybe the terrible thoughts that have seemingly became memories of horrible events will gradually soften to just memories of horrible thoughts.
But also, I want to believe that if the situation were reversed and my family were the people in danger, that a stranger would risk their life to save my family’s. And as bad as the fire was, it did also provide comfort that this hope is not just wishful thinking.
You see, during my second rescue attempt a stranger ran into my yard to tell me it was so dangerous I had to leave. However, when I told the stranger that my neighbour was trapped and I was trying to rescue her, he risked his own life by staying and helping me get my neighbour over the wall.
I still do not know who he was, but he was a wonderful proof of my belief of the inherent good of people.
What I would change
First the easy bit.
I will reduce our excess and increase our insured amount for our house and pay the extra premium that comes with that change. Even though it is not the most financially savvy decision statistically, in the event we go through something like this again I don’t want to be worrying about the size of the excess or if we had enough cover to replace and rebuild.
Now the hard bit.
There is no avoiding that a key part of pursuing F.I.R.E. is quantifying the financial impact of decisions. Decisions we have made and choices we are contemplating. This is not a criticism of F.I.R.E., indeed this is not exclusive to F.I.R.E, it is just a statement of the obvious.
The problem is when this quantification becomes the default initial assessment criteria, and one that consumes your thinking. This is an easy habit to fall into when you first get enamoured with F.I.R.E. – but it is a bad habit. My immediate focus in the aftermath of the fire was wrong. As much as I can try to look for reasons to try to understand the way I reacted, there are none. They are just excuses.
I can’t change how I behaved in those days, but I hope I have changed since I came to this realisation. I also hope my family will read this and know how sorry I am, and forgive me.
So, what’s up next?
Whilst I had intended this blog to be generally light-hearted and encouraging of F.I.R.E., these were just some of the intentions.
This blog was also meant to be a diary of my journey, and a chance to reflect on the mistakes I have made and will make in pursuing F.I.R.E. Admittedly, I thought these would be financial mistakes, and the journey would be less dramatic!
As I acknowledged before, this experience has highlighted that pursuing F.I.R.E. can have some detrimental side-affects. But to focus only on those downsides would not be fair, just as focusing only on the positives would be incomplete. Pursuing F.I.R.E. has had many positives and, in fact is crucial in us being able to get through this and make changes.
Now, I have always been a bit of a “numbers guy” and so I must admit that even if I was not pursuing F.I.R.E. I probably still would have had a financial focus in the aftermath of the fire and failed my family. But by pursuing F.I.R.E. I am more conscious of trying to understand myself and others, and what is important. And this helped me realise that I was not focusing on my family, and so was instrumental in changing my focus.
Also, the fact that we have been pursuing F.I.R.E. means that we have the money to pay the excess, and we can certainly pay the increased premium going forward. It also means that the potential extra cost because of my decision to rescue the neighbour won’t stop us from being able to take the best steps to recover.
I was never pursuing F.I.R.E. to live a life of deprivation and to just see how low I could get our cost of living down to. Pursuing fire F.I.R.E was so that we could have the financial base to have a consciously rich and fulfilling life.
And so, FIDERman will keep swinging for F.I.R.E. and the BLOG will continue. But no doubt it will be different from what I originally envisaged. You can’t go through an experience like we did and not be changed.
For those of you who read the footnotes:
The lead photo is a post-fire shot of a Spiderman using iron on beads that was made for me a few years ago. It was also the basis for my Excel created site logo. It is partly covered by some of the window frame the fire crew broke as they were fighting the fire .
The funny thing is that when I went to rescue my neighbour I was wearing my indulgently expensive Spiderman pyjamas
Yes, that “What’s up next” title is a shout out to Doc G, as I think of that as his catch-phrase