If There Was Fire/Tornado/Something Terrible Would You.....

[AbbysMom]

Of course we all say that we would get our animals and get them safe. If we are put in that situation though, it is not always possible. I know of a member here that has been in this situation and did manage to get her three sons safely out of a burning house, but was not able to save all the animals. She would do anything for her pets and it haunts her to this day. I'm sure she isn't the only member that has been in this situation, and I just want to say to everyone that has been and was unable to rescue all of their pets that you didn't do anything wrong, it just makes the disaster you faced much more tragic.

 

[proudmomof3cats]

I would get them. They are always by us anyways so we would just grab and run.

Manda

 

[shorty14788]

A woman I knew had a fire at her house several years back. Bad wiring on the outlet by the stove caused the wall to catch fire. She kept her dogs in the kitchen since one was a little puppy who was still being potty trained. NO one was at home when it started. When she got home she realized that the house was on fire. The nieghbors had already called 911 but no one had arrived yet. She ran into the house to save her dogs but she couldn't open the kitchen door. There was something blocking the door. Finally she had to run out because she couldn't breathe. As it turns out, the thing blocking the door was her older dog. Both of the dogs were already gone when she ran in there to save them.

The odd thing is... If the dog hadn't laid down right there, she would have been able to open the door. Which the firefighters later informed her, would have killed her. They said there would have been a flash (or whatever you call it) that would have caused the flames to come shooting out at her.

She still cries about not being able to save them...

 

[trouts mom]

I only have one kitty to find so hopefully it wouldn't be that hard for me.

I would definitely get Trout out though. I would never forgive myself if I bolted without her

 

[hopehacker]

I remember about 13 years ago, I was living with my sister. She was cooking dinner on the gas stove, when all of a sudden, she broke some part of the area that goes from the pilot light to the burner. I was sitting in the kitchen talking to her when it happened and the moment it broke, you could hear a hissing sound, and gas was escaping. Suddenly, my sister yells, "it's gonna blow!" and she grabbed me, and pushed me out of the door.

Frantically, I turned around and tried to get back in, because my Snoopy (Rainbow Bridge boy) was in my bedroom. She wouldn't let me go back in. I was freaking out and crying, and just waiting for the explosion that would kill my Snoopy. We ran to the neighbors and called the Fire Dept.

When they got there, they had to turn off the gas line, before they could enter. Once they did that, they let me go back in and get Snoopy. The firemen told us, we were lucky, because anything could have caused a spark and the entire house would have blown up. They said, that if I would have gone back in, it would have surely caused an explosion, in fact they said even if the telephone had rung, it would cause an explosion. The funny thing is, when my sister got us out of there, my niece had been on a phone call, and instead of hanging the phone up, she just dropped it and didn't hang it up. We found out that the friend she had been talking to, had been trying to call her back, while we were outside waiting for the firemen. If she had hung up the phone, my sister's house would have exploded. We would have lost everything, including my Snoopy.

 

[greenvillegal]

I would never, EVER abandon my kitties no matter what. I couldn't bear to lose them or have something happen to them, even if it meant I would get injured or even maybe die.

I have actually had mental "what if" images of me grabbing both of them and getting to the central part of the house in case of a tornado, or getting them both in their carrier and getting them out of a burning house quickly. I think I could do it in situations like that.

I know without a doubt that I would risk my life to save them in case of a disaster.

 

[april31]

Ok well you might not all like me after this but here it goes... Yes i would try to get all the animals out but... My kids come first and i dont think id risk death to go back into a burning house if the fire was that bad. My kids need me alive not dead. But yes I would do anything to make sure they got out but cant say i wouldnt leave without them. Now my kids I can say I wouldnt leave them.

 

[momofmany]

I always said that I would never abandon my pets. Then reality hit me twice: the first time our home caught fire and the second time a tornado hit without any warning.

Here's the reality of a traumatic situation. When my house caught fire, I opened up the doors and told the dogs to go outside. I caught one cat and also tossed him out the door. Then I turned to find others. In the commotion of the moment, every last one of them ran and found a deep spot to hide in, most under my king sized bed where I couldn't reach them. It would not have mattered if I had all the carriers in the world at my fingertips, the cats would not have been caught. I refocused my efforts in calling 911 and handing fire extinquishers to my DH so that he could attempt to put the fire out. Very early on I realized that the only way to save them was to stop the fire from taking the whole house.

The tornado was on top of our house when we noticed it. Up to that point it was a bad thunderstorm. Since we had no basement, we had to run outside to get to our detached storm cellar. The wind was so strong that I was blown to the ground and had to crawl. Any cat in a carrier would have been sucked up into the tornado and blown to the next county, along with everything else that was around me (we found entire boats resting in the tops of our trees). In this situation, the cats had a better chance of survival inside the house than coming outside with me.

I hear a lot of people say that they would do anything to save their cats. In the middle of the situation, you save yourself. This doesn't mean that I love my babies any less than anyone else. It's just reality.

 

[dragoriana]

Chuckie is indoors so i'd run and get the carrier from the garage then bundle him in. If it was at Tristans parents house, well i'd hope Timmy wasn't too far away, Cleo is indoors as well and the puppies are never far. Our pets are highly important, i've always said if something happened to Charlie i would wither away and die without him, he's been my first baby for 8 years.

 

[norachelhere]

Not crazy. . . I think you are perfectly sane. I would most deffinatly grab the cat first thing. . . Although if it was something loud like a fire alarm she would probably already be up my butt, so I would not have to do too much searching, but she would deffinatley be first priority!

 

[breal76]

I would.

I have.

The alarm to my apartment building went off. Mind you at this point in my life I didn't have cat carriers.

I had two cats at the time, so I found them and off we went with one cat under each arm in my PJ's at 10:30 at night. Took em down 3 flights of stairs to get them outside.


They were all I took with me, I could care less about the rest.

It was a false alarm thank god...

But I do know what my instinct would be a any emergency situation.

 

[catsarebetter]

Well, I don't have children that I'm raising, other than my furchildren, so I don't have children other than them that depend on me.

We did have a huge tornado watch or warning on July 4th of this year. I didn't know this, of course, until it hit me that the weather was really goofy, and I felt like.. eh, I feel like a tornado is coming. I was in the kitchen cooking. I could hear that "freight train" noise (which I've never heard before)... and thought, hmph, that sounds like a tornado, so I glanced outside, and it was pretty much sunny, except there were a few splotches of water on the sidewalk. There was definitely no serious weather going on. I chalked it up to my refrigerator making noise.

A few minutes later, I hear some thunder, and think, that's sort of odd, but I didn't think anything about it really, except that if there was a storm coming, I needed to light candles (our power goes out frequently). So, I kept making my food. When it came to a point where I could leave it, I went and found a lighter and was about to go light the candles. I hear this plink plink plink. I was thinking to myself... I wonder what that is, and I glanced out the sliding glass doors to the deck. It was hail. I freaked.

I zipped out to the kitchen, turned the gas off. I got my mother's bird out of the bathroom. I called the cats. I flipped the weather channel on and saw after a few minutes that there's a tornado watch/warning. I yelled to Noel and Joyeux (who were luckily sitting out side the basement door) to go downstairs. They bolted. I took the bird downstairs. I ran upstairs and got Khan, I tossed him downstairs. I plopped Pogue in the carrier and I was running around for Bagheera. I couldn't find her, so I took Pogue downstairs, and went back up to look for her. I was still looking for her, in the main part of the house, when the warning finally passed.

I was terrified (surprisingly enough, because I'm usually looking for tornados), but I think I was terrified for the cats. I definitely thought there was one. I just... felt it... I guess the pressure from the storm and such was just really odd and then things started happening to indicate the tornado weather.

Anyway, I'm fairly certain that I'd be looking for my cats/