I spent three decades in the Tulsa public school system teaching middle school science and history. My life was built on lesson plans, bell schedules, and organized filing cabinets. I believed that if you followed the rules and maintained your infrastructure, you were safe. That illusion shattered on November 14, at 2:13 AM. Unlike the dramatic explosions you see in movies, the fire that took our home in the Maple Ridge district started with the insidious, quiet smell of burning pine insulation. The breakdown of the knob-and-tube wiring in our 1940s attic didn't announce itself until the smoke detectors finally screamed. My husband and I didn't run out in a cinematic panic; we moved with the rigid, adrenaline-fueled discipline of a fire drill - a procedure I had practiced with thousands of students. We grabbed our robes, the "go-bag" I kept by the door, and we exited. Standing barefoot on the freezing pavement, watching the roof collapse into the master bedroom, I felt a devastating loss of control. I was no longer Mrs. Jenkins, the authority figure; I was a statistic. In those hours, I wasn't thinking about heirlooms; I was thinking about the physics of heat rising and the structural integrity of timber. By dawn, the structure where we raised our three sons was classified as a "total loss."
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