Am I Doing Any Good In The World.....

Sometimes I wonder if I am doing anything with my life. I am not solving world hunger or at the moment even employed. However, I have moments almost daily where I run into someone, follow a "feeling" or someone calls to ask advise and I have to reflect on those moments and think I may not be saving the world but I may be helping to save one person. 

I shared with you yesterday about my weird experience with returning the broken dehydrator and how unusual the timing of it all was as her husband was going through similar things that my mom went through a few years ago needing a brain shunt. God has his hand in all things for sure. Here is a link to the post about my mom's shunt  etc.

So, I want to share with you what happened yesterday and tomorrow, share another situation from last week. 

I received two messages on my answering machine yesterday from a law office in Memphis. I thought perhaps "someone" was up to the usual stuff "someone" gets up to on a regular basis but in the second call, the woman gave me some specific information and told me I didn't know her but that she wanted some help from something she found on my blog about a smoke alarm/detector that I posted in a picture. The post she is referring to is posted here in March of 2012.

She said a woman lost her five children and boyfriend in a fire and she was hoping my specific information would be able to help them find out the manufacturer of the unit I had pictured.

I wasn't able to reach her before closing as they are ahead of us time wise but called her first things this morning. I guess when they couldn't reach me, the blew up the pictures and were able to get the manufacturer off the pictures due to the high resolution of the pictures. I told her to thank Panasonic for the pictures as they gave me the camera I won a few years ago and it takes AMAZING pictures. See that post here.

She thanked me for my post called, "The grass may be greener but it's full of weeds." See part one of that post here. Click here for part two of that post. She said it really inspired her and she thought my attitude was wonderful and she has been a single mom before and thanked me for my blog. She said she had never read a blog before but liked mine. I told her "Thanks" for the compliments as it is always nice to hear. 

She then gave me a horrible story about smoke detectors not working on smoldering fires and how for just a few dollars more, you can get the type that are more advanced and will work with smoldering fires. She asked if I still had the detector and I couldn't remember what I did with them but checked with the recycle place to see if they had them tossed in a bucket somewhere. I also checked my garage as I put a few out there as I have heard of cars catching fire sometimes in that garage etc. 

I couldn't find it and then remembered giving my sister a bag of that type of stuff when she moved into her new house a few years ago. See that post here. You can see from that post, it was within a week or so of my energy audit so she thinks she may actually have that smoke detector somewhere. I figured the way her house is set up, she could use all the alarms she could get. I sent her a picture of the unit they want and she will get back to me. However, even if we don't have the unit, at least they know the manufacturer on it now. 

This is what she told me with a bit more detail about the fire. She told me that the woman wasn’t sue happy. She said that neighbors could see smoke and hear the kids crying and trying to get out but couldn’t get the door opened. They said the smoke alarm wasn’t going off and when the fire crew arrived, it wasn’t going off and the family was all dead from smoke. When they got the door opened, the smoke alarm finally went off. The woman lost everything and everyone in her life. So sad. 

It made me count my blessings as I think losing one child would be devastating but five and your partner at the same time made me want to cry. She was working at a fast food place when she found out and rode her bike home. She lost everything she owned and everyone she loved in a few minutes. 

The woman on the phone told me she felt that I was inspired to post pictures of the smoke detectors as they are trying to get the regulations changed to FORCE the companies to make sure they are the type that will detect smoldering smoke fires rather than just heat from actual fires. I am all for that as my mothers house burnt to the ground as well as my cousins. My cousin and her children were sleeping and if her husband hadn't come home just then to wake them and get them out , they would have lost more than their house and belongings. She said her detector was going off but it sounded so much like the alarm clock that it didn't wake her. She wants to lobby to have smoke detectors have human voices yelling "FIRE, GET OUT! as most people wake to a human voice but not necessarily to beeping. 

I have checked my detectors many times at night and my kids have never woken when I turn them on. It is a bit disturbing to think you may sleep through that. 

Anyway, I was given a reminder today of how blessed I am to have my beautiful girls in my life and I will take my cross of divorce, health issues etc when I learn of others trials. I will add this woman to my prayers and hope that changes will be made to the laws that will ensure that no one else will have to go through that type of loss and trial!