Fathers day was two days ago and I woke up angry because my dad was mad at me for talking back the night before.

Dad, i'm sorry, even though you may never see this.

Yesterday I learned how sorry I was. That fire tragedy hit home. My dad is a Captain in the city of Charleston fire department. It is lucky for me that it was not his shift because one of my dad's friends died... a guy i knew.

My dad was the first one in the building after the roof exploded off. No, it didn't collapse, the news knows very little during things like this. He was the first one in with an engineer who lost his crew when the roof collapsed. Thank god my dad arrived on the scene after that or he'd have been in there.

So he found the first two fallen men.

Dad, I am so sorry that you ever had to go through this and I apologize for being mad this weekend. I would take back everything if I could and I am so very very glad that you weren't killed when you went in.

I took fathers day for granted and I learned my lesson. 7 families are without fathers tonight... and the other two were so young they hadn't had time to start families.

One of the 27 year old firefighters killed, Brandon, was a friend. We received his wedding announcement the week before.

Thank you, Dad, thank you Brandon, thank you everyone who made the ultimate sacrifice and for everyone still going to fires every day putting themselves in harms way to save other people.

And to the owner of Sofa Super Store (that sofa we bought there sucked anyway)--Sprinklers would have made my dad's night a lot easier last night. Sprinklers could have saved brandon from dying and his fiance from the pain she is in now. Sprinklers save lives, and I hope you learn your lesson.

I'm sorry i wrote all this. I am a wreck right now.