At 1am on Saturday morning I found myself standing outside for an hour or so in the near freezing temperature wearing fairly light clothes I’d thrown on in a hurry. Why? Well, I was watching a neighbour’s house burn to the ground in a ball of incredibly fierce, white-hot fire.

I first went outside in my PJs to investigate some strange noises. As I reached my driveway I was confronted with an enormous wall of bright red and yellow – clearly a big fire and very close (just one backyard away). I ran inside and got the phone – and then made myself go outside again to double-check what I’d seen as I couldn’t quite believe it! I called emergency and was told that the fire brigade were already on their way.

The thing that scared me most at first was noticing big embers blowing directly into the huge pine trees right next to my house. Realistically it was probably too cold for them to catch alight, but in the shock of seeing it my first thought was that I needed to evacuate. If it had been summer instead of the middle of winter, that would have been very necessary.

But I calmed down and decided the first priority had to be to go and make sure neighbours were awake, check if anyone was hurt and to find out if there was anything I could do.

A few people were there already when I arrived, including a couple of boys hosing down the roof next door which was very close to going up in flames. The hose was making little difference and the first house was too far gone – just minutes after the fire had started – to be saved. At that stage I could only just make out the shape of the lovely old house through the flames which completely engulfed it.

I asked someone if everyone was okay and she told me that the family who live in the house were away, the people whose house was almost on fire seemed not to be home and the people the other side were away too. There was nothing I could do, other than keep an eye on whether there was any potential for my own place to be seriously at risk.

Finally the fire brigade arrived, much to everyone’s relief as by then the fire inside the front of the house was white hot and there were numerous explosions inside – for a few moments it seemed like the entire front of the house was going to explode. Because the first house was clearly well beyond saving they focused immediately on saving the second one, which thankfully they were able to do.

It took about an hour for the fire people and their five fire trucks to get it under control, by which time a lot more neighbours had woken up to the sound of sirens and had come outside into the cold with stunned looks on their faces.

By the time the fire was controlled there was nothing much left of the house. The frame had collapsed and burnt. When I went back in daylight the next morning to have a look it’s clear that the owners have lost everything, apart from their picket fence which is still standing there as if nothing has happened. At the front where the fire was most intense there’s just a blackened rectangle on the ground to indicate that there was ever a room there.

So it’s been making me think a lot about possessions and what they really mean. And about risk and that sort of thing too. I live in a similar wood-framed house and it was stunning to see just how fast, fiercely and completely such a house can burn. Also I know that the first neighbour to call emergency did so only a minute or two after the fire started, yet the house was still entirely lost.

But also it’s been making me think about chance. It’s incredibly lucky that the family were away – it was late at night and they have young children, so its hard to know if they would have made it out safely. And it’s also very lucky for everyone nearby that this didn’t happen in summer. That part of the street is considered ‘indefensible’ in a bushfire and all of the houses and trees nearby could have easily gone up in different weather conditions – including my place with the wind blowing in the same direction.

The other thing I have been giving some thought to is that based on what witnesses told the police on the night, the fire was considered to be suspicious. If that’s backed up by other evidence, it’s definitely a cause for concern. It makes me glad I go to bed so late and that I have so many external doors to my home!

Anyway, I guess the moral of the story is that everyone should be in some way prepared for something like this just in case. I’ve given a lot of thought as to what to do if there are bushfires threatening my town, but not so much to a regular house fire. It’s something I’ll be thinking more about now.