A year ago this week, Martin and I were just five days each from selling our respective houses; what’s known as the “closing.”

It was Saturday night and there was a light snowfall. Because it preceded the storms of the following week it was still charming.

Martin decided to burn firewood that was too bulky to move. The fire in his fireplace was well established when he added two more logs.

Twenty minutes later the fire department had arrived and a series of contingent real estate moves looked like it could have been flattened like a line of dominoes.

“Is your damper open?” the firefighters asked as they efficiently snuffed the logs that Martin had wrestled out of his living room and thrown onto the snow. Martin told them yes. The chimney flue had been drawing perfectly for an hour.

“Damper’s closed,” a firefighter announced, reaching his gloved hand inside the chimney. One of the logs, from a spruce removed from my Ballard backyard had knocked the damper shut.

The small house had filled with smoke, paint on the hearth was scorched and there were burn marks on the wool rug. Elapsed time was 20 minutes; total smoke damage was in the thousands.

I thought about that incident when I returned home from yoga two weeks ago to sight of fire trucks lining the street near the home that we somehow still managed to acquire despite the events last year.

As a child, I lived next to Engine #4 of a volunteer fire department. When our engine went on a call, we were excited.

My attitudes have changed greatly since I was an ignorant child. Forget flames, where’s there’s smoke I know there’s damage.

It is human nature to be curious about the flashing lights of emergency response, the firefighters in gear with their glow-in-the-dark stripes illuminated by the headlights of cars being rerouted to other streets.

The neighbors step out to the street, they mingle nervously and when word is passed along that the fire is out, no one is at home, the dogs got out safely. There’s often a giddy quality along the sidewalks.

But, there is still the aftermath.

Last year, Martin fled his home wearing flip-flops in the snow, eyes bloodshot from the smoke. He never stayed in that house again.

His insurance dispatched the clean-up crew with their filtering machines and an arsenal of rags to wipe every belonging.

In just 10 minutes there was carbon coating even the smallest vase cowering in the back of a closed kitchen cabinet. Soot webs drooped from every ceiling as though it was a haunted house. Martin was certainly haunted.

Between snowstorms, the house was cleaned and the buyers recognized that the potential of all new paint, carpet and freshly cleaned blinds was not a deal breaker with the smell of smoke magically dissipated.

I am always being reminded of how quickly we can lose what we take for granted, our shelter, our health.

Three of my friends have had accidents on the Burke-Gilman Trail this year while on bicycles – two hit by cars, one hit by another bicyclist. The accidents took seconds, yet one of my friends may have a titanium arm forever.

Even as I worked on this column, another accident occurred. The boy next door was struck by a vehicle while riding his bicycle home from school. He was lucky, “only” a broken wrist.

So how bad is it for the family whose home drew such a huge emergency response on a Sunday night on Sunset Hill?

Although I don’t know this family yet, I’m sure it’s the same mixture of lucky that it wasn’t worse – and abysmal.

They are looking at months of repairs to their home, opening walls to replace the electrical, the need to relocate just before the holidays, everything they own from inside the house needing to be professionally cleaned or discarded.

People always gather on the street when there’s an emergency – not to gawk but because they wish they could do more to help.

Some are close friends, others new to the block. Everyone is glad that the family is safe but also that it wasn’t their house. They vow to replace batteries in the smoke detectors, make an evacuation plan.

As the extra fire crews return to their stations, leaving a core group to investigate and secure the site, the neighbors return to their warm homes.

The family that lived in the damaged home doesn’t have that option.

It could be any street, any family.

The house on Sunset Hill was already strung with evergreen garlands; from the front sidewalk it still looks fine. Perhaps the owners look fine too, but just as with my bicyclist friends, Martin after his smokey night, they are lucky but not untouched.

The fire trucks are long gone. The neighbors are still there. Knock on our doors even if we’ve never met. Trust me, none of us are untouched.