Fire!

A house burned down last night not far from me. I had heard sirens last night for about a half hour, but didn't know what was going on. R said he saw flames over the trees when he was coming home from work. My coworker told me the name of the road today, because he saw it on the news. I thought that road was near my house. I checked on the auditor's web site for the street, and sure enough, the road is in my area. I clicked on the street name and there was a list of about 25 properties.

I asked my coworker if he heard the name of the family. He had not. He said he thought he heard that a woman was injured or died in the fire. I selected a random property about 2/3 of the way down the list. Just to see exactly how close the house was to mine. The Auditor's site will list all kinds of info about the property, ownership, transfers, and show a map. I looked at the map for the property I selected and realized the road was only about 2 miles from me. (I only moved in February - I don't know all of the streets yet).

I then said "I wonder if the Local Newspaper will have the story in its online edition." Sure enough, it was the first story listed. I clicked on the link for the story. 2 young children escaped the fire. The wife perished after returning to the house to try to rescue their pet parrot. The husband was driving home from work at the time.

The property I had randomly selected from the Auditor's site was the exact property where the fire was.