There I was, standing in my pajamas like a schmuck, desperately looking for a silver lining while my house burned in front of me.

You’d like to think you’d be a big hero when danger strikes. That you’d be the one rescuing the guy in his P.J.s, not the one with unkempt hair and no socks watching as the place he has called home for nearly two years crackles and smolders.

But if not for sheer annoyance at the pounding and yelling downstairs, I wouldn’t have even looked out my apartment door.  I wouldn’t have seen the huge flames licking at my stair landing’s window and I wouldn’t have shoved my reluctant dog outside to the safety of the lawn.

So much for being a hero.

Fire isn’t something we spend much time thinking about. It happens to other people. 

“Oh, there was another fire today, how terrible... What’s on TV?”

But what happens when the flame knocks at your door?

The first thing was a sense of relief from escaping the building with my pooch and myself intact. 

Thanks again are in order for Tanner Archuleta, Jacob Javorsky and Amanda Buxton, the three Flathead High School students who saved me from an impromptu barbecue Tuesday morning (I wasn’t even seasoned  it would have been a pretty lame barbecue).

I’ve already given them thanks by way of gift cards (do teenagers still like Starbucks?), but I’m sure they are as sick of the attention as I am of being known as “the fire guy in the paper.”

But how do I move on? 

I’m effectively homeless, relying on the goodwill of my friends and coworkers to have a safe place to lay my head at night, but not because there aren’t options. The Red Cross called me to let me know they were available for me. State Farm called to let me know my renter’s insurance policy was ready for me to file a fire loss claim whenever I regained my wits.

As much as the goodwill from neighbors, friends and even strangers makes me feel all warm inside, my life has been flipped, turned upside down. I don’t feel safe or comfortable.

If those teens hadn’t woken me up, the fire caused by neighborly negligence might have injured me — or worse. I was dead asleep when the knocking woke me up. I might have just been dead. The fire actually shattered the glass in the window behind me as I pushed my terrified dog down the stairs.

I stood blinking in the 8 a.m. sunshine while a police officer escorted my dog into the back seat of his cruiser like a furry felon. I made a call to work letting my boss know I might be a bit late. I laugh as I see flames jump above roof level. This is sheer, bewildered, I-woke-up-five-minutes-ago shock.

As a journalist, you expect to report the news, not become it. So when my coworkers were talking to me like a victim, that was a little world-changing. 

And, of course, when I head up the stairs to my apartment 24 hours later, crunching plaster and drywall and blackened glass and insulation under my shoes, I know I can’t live here anymore. My second bedroom is utterly destroyed. Two of the walls had collapsed from the combined efforts of the Kalispell, Evergreen and Smith Valley fire departments (thank goodness for their quick response to the scene) to quell the fire. 

That room was used mostly as a second bedroom/home office as well as storage space. Luggage? Gone. Extra bed? Finito. Work desk? Not any more it’s not.

That leaves me in a mad dash to find housing, lest I surf couches forever. Do you know how hard it is to find an affordable rental in the valley that allows dogs? 

But the worst thing out of all of this wasn’t my smoky clothes in an adjacent room. It wasn’t the books destroyed by the fallen roof or the crash landing into the Sahara Desert that is renting in the Flathead — it was the damage to my precious college diploma.

But maybe this means I don’t have to pay my student loans.

Silver linings, right?

Reporter Ryan Murray may be reached at 758-4436 or by email at rmurray@dailyinterlake.com.