H. Patrick
Weber '71, '74 J.D.
On that typical late August Saturday in suburban Cincinnati --
hot and humid with a forecast of evening thunderstorms -- I convinced
myself that the grass was too damp to cut early in the morning.
That meant I could take a five-mile walk with Courtney, who would
be leaving for her junior year at Notre Dame the following weekend.
The third of our children to attend Notre Dame, Courtney was
excited about seeing her campus friends again and looking forward
to her spring semester in London. And we were both anxious to
see her sister, Carmen '01, a graduate student at Ohio State University,
who was due to arrive soon. My wife, Marilyn, treasures the rare
opportunities to have both of her daughters with her.
The weekend grass-cutting routine is my scheduled escape from
the world of cell phones, voice mail, faxes and e-mail. My day
in the yard was completed as the three women in my life returned
from shopping. We enjoyed a quiet dinner at home, attended Saturday
evening Mass and stopped at the local sweet shop. The predicted
thunderstorm arrived at 10 p.m. and continued unabated as we prepared
for bed shortly before midnight.
I awakened, startled, at 1:15 a.m. as the bedroom door opened
and Courtney entered on her hands and knees. She crawled to Marilyn's
side of the bed and said, "What's wrong?" Marilyn asked what she
meant, and Courtney again said, "What's wrong?" We both realized
from the glazed look in her eyes that she was asleep. She had
never sleep-walked (or sleep-crawled) before. Marilyn shook her,
and Courtney awakened. "I'm sorry," she said. "What am I doing
in your room? I'm going back to bed." Marilyn walked her back
to her bedroom. The thunderstorm continued to rage outside.
Seconds later, my clock radio began playing music. I rolled
over to turn it off, but it kept playing. Marilyn returned to
the bedroom and asked why I had turned the radio on. I explained
that it had come on by itself, and I couldn't turn it off. She
found the clock-radio plug and disconnected it from the outlet.
Lying in bed and listening to the roar of the storm, I decided
I needed a trip to the bathroom before I could fall asleep again.
I was surprised to discover that the lights in the bathroom weren't
working. I thought that this was strange because the bedroom lights
and the hallway lights were functioning. I told Marilyn that I
was headed to the basement electrical panel board to reset a circuit
breaker.
As I neared the door to the second floor hallway, I caught a
whiff of smoke. It was subtle, and none of the eight smoke alarms
in the house reacted to it. My first thought was that we had an
electrical short circuit. I ran to the basement electrical panel
board but found that none of the circuit breakers had been tripped.
Marilyn was checking the kitchen. She turned on the outside
floodlights and yelled to me that she saw smoke in the backyard.
I ran up the basement stairs to the patio door. Billowing clouds
of black smoke filled the backyard, but I did not see any flames.
I ran out into the storm and looked back at the house. Black smoke
was rolling out of the ridge vent at the peak of the roof and
from the air intake vents under the eaves. Our attic was on fire!
I ran back into the house to tell everyone that the attic was
on fire. Marilyn called 911. The four of us went out the front
door and stood in the front yard. The storm raged on as we stood
in our wet night clothes and surveyed the surreal scene before
us.
The fire department trucks began to arrive. The first fireman
to enter the attic went through the ceiling trap door with a full
oxygen suit and a thermal imaging device. He later reported to
us that all of the roof trusses and roof sheeting were glowing
like red charcoal. He explained that a confined attic fire is
starved for oxygen. It burns and builds up pressure until it burns
through the roof to obtain the needed oxygen, and then it explodes
downward, blowing out the house's ceiling, windows and doors in
a blowtorch-like backdraft of flames.
The firefighter told us that we were lucky to get out alive,
because the fire would have burned through the roof in 10 to 15
minutes and "you wouldn't have known what hit you." He asked us
what had awakened us. "Attic fires don't set off smoke alarms,"
he said. I described to him the miraculous series of events: Courtney's
sleep-crawling, the clock radio music and the bathroom lights
that didn't work. He said, "Somebody upstairs is looking out for
you."
When the firefighters completed their work, they invited us
to slosh through the debris to view the source of the fire. A
lightning bolt had hit the peak of the roof and had shattered
three roof trusses. The fire started in the attic and had burned
for 30 to 45 minutes before we awakened. The point of impact in
the attic was directly over the hallway wall between our bedroom
and Courtney's bedroom. On the hallway side of that wall hangs
a plaque of Our Lady of Guadalupe that our daughters had brought
back from a mission trip to Mexico. On the other side of that
wall hangs a photograph of the Grotto of Our Lady of Lourdes at
the University of Notre Dame. Clearly, somebody upstairs had been
looking out for us.
Our son Kevin '97 had arrived from his apartment to share this
emotional experience with us. When the firemen departed at 4:30
a.m., the five of us stood with locked arms in a prayer circle,
giving thanks to God that our lives had been spared.
We needed a place to unwind before the insurance adjuster's
7 a.m. arrival. My parents were at their summer cottage in Michigan,
so I knew that we could use their Cincinnati home. Shortly after
we arrived at their home, my father's alarm clock went off. We
thought we had received all of the wake-up calls that we needed
that morning.
After a brief respite, we went back to survey our home's damage
in the daylight. The insurance adjuster estimated that it would
take six months to repair the damage. (He was one week short.)
My sister and her husband, who live nearby, arrived to help us
move furniture out of water-logged rooms. They left to dress for
Sunday morning Mass, but my sister almost immediately drove back
up our driveway. She was flushed and crying. I could barely make
out what she was saying. "Dad's dead. Mom just found him dead
in the bed this morning."
I was dumbstruck. I had not yet comprehended the reality of
the fire, and now I was being told of my father's death. We quickly
joined in our family prayer circle again to pray for the repose
of the soul of my father, Harry P. Weber.
I have learned a lot from the events of August 19, 2001: The
odds of a house being struck by lightning in a given year are
200 to 1. The heat of a lightning bolt is up to 50,000 degrees
Fahrenheit. A heat alarm should be installed in your attic and
hard-wired to the smoke alarms in your house. It is advisable
to install a lightning rod system on the roof (we now have 12
lightning rods) to channel the flow of the lightning's electrical
current into the ground.
Most importantly, I have learned that your parents never stop
looking out for you, even after they are dead.
* * *
H. Patrick Weber is an attorney with Barrett & Weber in Cincinnati.
