At 1:25am I woke up. I woke up with my house being shook hard, and there was a very loud noise... because three houses down and across the alley a house exploded. Weird.

I thought something had fallen... it was the only frame of reference I might have had. i walked around trying to figure it out, totally baffled. Awake, but confounded. I finally made my way to my back room and saw flames, huge, house-engulfing flames, out the window and down the alley just a few houses. I heard the sirens coming down the street as I was looking for my phone to call 911. A neighbor came and banged on my door wanting to make sure I was up if anything were to happen. The house down the street had totally exploded and was just lost to flames.

I went outside, with the rest of my neighborhood, and sat on a lawn across the street from the house, watching firefighters do their job. A Policeman came over and asked for my info, I spoke with some neighbors as we exchanged stories of the past half hour. He also told me which houses in front of us used to be crack houses. Good. Thanks. One person pointed down the street to an object in the road. It was the front door of the house, still stuck in its frame, that had been blown across the road. We were commenting on how glad we were the wind was blowing all smoke and ashes away from the neighborhood.

About 2:30am, I walked back across the street to home and went back to bed. No one had been hurt. The house was unocupied for quite some time. They suspected it was a gas leak.

I drove by the house today and obviously it's nothing. It was just so surreal to watch a house in my neighborhood go up in flames. I've always thought about what things I would try to take if threatened by a fire. I've made this plan for, like, ever. I never thought of a house just exploding, though.

Moral of this story - check all gas valves. I don't want to hear of anyone's house exploding.