King Witnesses Tragedy

I find it very hard to write about this but I need to. Normally I try to find humor in anything and everything that I see and read about in this world. Not tonight. On my way home from work I saw lots of smoke in the distance. I thought something was happening on Spencerport road. When I cleared the Lyell road intersection I could see the flashing emergency lights near the road I turn off on. It turned out to be a major house fire in my neighborhood and if you watched the six o'clock news you heard about it. I parked my car at home and went to see if it was anyone I knew. It wasn't but that did not matter as it was still a neighbor that was being affected. The house was pretty much almost fully engulfed by the time I walked down to it. Before I arrived at the scene a twenty year old man on the second floor managed to break a window and jumped to safety, though injuring himself badly, and alerted the firemen that there was someone still on the first floor. It was a heartbreaking scene made much worse when I found out that a gentleman, who was in his seventies, did not make it. The firefighters held off trying to suppress the fire as they concentrated on rescuing the man but the fire had too much of an advantage. The firefighters did their best but the fire grew too rapidly and by the time they pulled him out he had died from smoke inhalation.
Something like this makes you stop and think. It makes you think about how quickly a life can be snuffed out. How quickly a normal day can turn into a tragedy. It just breaks your heart to see a neighbor in distress. I have passed this house many a time when I take my walks around the neighborhood. It was just a normal house in a normal neighborhood. You never expect this to happen, you really don't. It hits you hard. My deepest sympathies go out to the family of the deceased.