A neighbor who tried to crawl into the house was greeted by smoke so thick he couldn't make it. His quote:
"It was eerie," she said. "There was no noise in the house at all. Just silence."
It's interesting to see that explanation of it, because once upon a time when I lived in Tennessee, our neighbor's house (doublewide, actually) caught on fire (the second time their house had burnt; just a year or so earlier, their single-wide trailer burnt, as well) in the middle of the night. Their dogs were still inside, so the owner insisted on crawling in after the one in the front bedroom, near the front door. I suggested he not go, but ended up crawling in behind him and keeping him in sight while he dragged out one of the dogs (the other apparently never moved and died in the fire).
The explanation of the silence struck me (gave me a chill, actually), because that's what I experienced. It was like entering some kind of warp zone. It was the middle of the night, and we were pretty much in the middle of nowhere, but it was a different silence, suffocating. And even though it was pitch black, the color in the house seemed brown, somehow.
It's not like I went far into the house; I was only a matter of a few feet inside. But that was more than enough for an experience I won't forget. It makes me realize why people can so easily die in a house fire; it is very disorienting, and I can only imagine how quickly panic would set in.
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