Neighborhood explosion

November 4th at 9:13 I had just loaded my kids in the car to go run some errands and put the garage door up when all of the sudden I heard this loud noise and felt my car moving. My first thought was that my garage door had just fallen on my car. I looked up and nope it was still on the tracks then I wondered if I had hit something but didn't remember taking the car out of park yet I looked down and sure enough it was still in park. So I jumped out of the car to go look around outside and that is when I saw the flame reach higher than the tallest smoke stack at the refinery by my house. My first thought was I hope everyone at the refinery is okay then it was to get the heck out of there before anything else went wrong. As I was pulling out of the neighborhood I called Paul and said the refinery just exploded we are okay but I am getting out of here. Then instantly I thought of my friend who lives down the street and knew that with how big the explosion was something had to be wrong at her house and hoped that no one was hurt. When I called her husband answered and said we are okay but we can't talk now. I quickly said do you need any help? but he had already hung up. So off to my mom's house to be away from the refinery but somewhere were I could watch the news and see if I needed to hurry home and get somethings out of my house. As I am watching the news and they were talking about how house were destroyed but so far no one was hurt and the fire was out; I quickly loaded my kids back into the car and back home to see what damage had occurred. My brother Dallas came with me and we made the kids stay in the car as we looked to make sure there wasn't any broken glass or worse. Everything was fine so we then headed down to my friend Kristi's to see what help she needed. Nothing could have prepared me for what I saw. Her house was practically destroyed. Tons of broken windows, ever wall had at least a 4 foot crack in it. Doors that were broken because they were blow in the opposite direction that they opened and the wall in her garage was leaning to were there was a several inch gap were you could look up and see the sky. The roof had literally been blown off her house, sifted, and then came back down. Kristi was doing ok and really was just waiting to find out if she was needed to leave her house or what was going to happen with her and her family. There has been lots of damage to houses in my neighborhood and we still have people that like to drive through and see the damage. I have learned lots of things. One my house is just a house and my stuff is just stuff, people are more important. I love my neighborhood I love the people and how they pull together to help each other out and I love how quiet it is. Not a ton of traffic, usually just the sound of kids playing outside. I am really glad that we picked the house that we did.