Sunday, August 13, 2006
Liar, Liar...House on Fire?
So there's been a slight delay in the blogging of late. Part of this was due to my own busy schedule, consisting primarily of watching DVD's (Hooray for finishing 4 seasons of 24! Hooray for finishing 1 season of The Office!), studying French for my graduate program, and a steady diet of cheese fries paid for by my pub trivia habit. Part of it was due to family events; my cousin got married and the Invisible Family finally got to meet my wonderful (Invisible?) girlfriend! And I got to travel with said girlfriend down to the beach to experience the wonder of the Jersey shore. (Hooray for frozen custard! And fried Oreos! And sand flies! Ok...maybe not sand flies.)
And part of it was because my building was burning down.
Now before you ask, I am not joking. And no, I did not CAUSE the fire in question. In fact, when it started last Thursday, I was hoping to enjoy a quiet evening at home watching quality network programming on television. I was chatting on the phone with the girlfriend when I heard what sounded like a car alarm from the parking lot below my balcony. Strangely enough though, when I peered out on to the balcony to determine which car was causing the racket, the noise actually got quieter.
So it WASN'T a car alarm. That explains why it was going for a good ten minutes without stopping. But what else would make a steady, high-pitched beeping noise in the building? Some sort of klaxon or...?
Oh hell.
I went to the door and discovered that the fire alarm had gone off. What's more, a few people were knocking on doors down the hall to let them know that this was not a malfunction or a drill. There was a fire on the fifth floor. I went inside, said goodbye to my girlfriend and grabbed my wallet, cellphone, keys, and a yo-yo. (My girlfriend mocked me for the last choice, but honestly, I figured I'd be standing around outside of my apartment for a while. May as well practice the new trick I'd been working on since replacing my wornout string at the shore!) Then it was off to the stairs, descending the 17 flights or so to the ground floor. Around the 5th, you could start to smell smoke, and it just got stronger as I moved closer to the lobby.
I wish I had the foresight to have brought a camera to document the madness outside. After being corralled outside and dodging the firemen running into the buiding, I shuffled towards the garage to see if it might be possible to get to my car. Unfortunately, even if I could get in, approximately a dozen emergency vehicles had blocked off the road. Completely blocked it. A city bus had been stopped from completing its normal route because of this! The fire itself was visible from the ground floor, but considering it was only on the second floor, it doesn't seem quite as impressive. Still, the flames were pouring out the window and licking their way up to the third floor. A helicopter circled the building with a spotlight casting the pillar of smoke rising from the blaze in a stark white light. Police pushed us back further as the fumes filled the air and made breathing more difficult. I called my family just to let them know that everything was ok, except for my building being on fire. Then a quick call to my girlfriend indicating the same.
And I figured that would be that. My girlfriend had indicated that she would be willing to pick me up if I needed a place to stay what with my apartment playing host to what seemed like the entire city emergency response team. I figured that even if I wanted to take that option, the roads were not exactly accessible what with the ambulances and fire trucks jamming up major access routes. I told her I'd call back. And a few times, I tried...but I somehow always seemed to get voicemail.
I wandered around to the back of the building and ran into a neighbor who happened to be a fellow teacher at Underwood. We stood there watching the smoke and chatting until suddenly, to our surprise, the alarm stopped beeping. The fire must have been extinguished! And just when I thought to start walking back to the front to check out the scene, who do I see coming from the direction of the garage? Yes, despite our apparent communication failure and the trouble accessing the apartment's parking lot, my girlfriend had taken it upon herself to rescue me from an evening of damage control and secondhand smoke. (Hooray for my girlfriend!)
So everything ended up well in the end. After crashing at my girlfriend's new apartment (now with working air conditioning!), I returned home the subsequent morning to find a faint aroma of smoke filling the room and my desk lamp still on from the night before. It appears the property damage was restricted to the second and third floors, where boards are still up over the window frames since the firemen had to smash the glass to get inside. There are air purifiers in the lobby and it still smells smoky in the stairwells. But otherwise, things were ok. Which is good, because it would be a shame if my apartment went up in smoke mere weeks before I pack everything up to go to graduate school.
More on that score later.
So there's been a slight delay in the blogging of late. Part of this was due to my own busy schedule, consisting primarily of watching DVD's (Hooray for finishing 4 seasons of 24! Hooray for finishing 1 season of The Office!), studying French for my graduate program, and a steady diet of cheese fries paid for by my pub trivia habit. Part of it was due to family events; my cousin got married and the Invisible Family finally got to meet my wonderful (Invisible?) girlfriend! And I got to travel with said girlfriend down to the beach to experience the wonder of the Jersey shore. (Hooray for frozen custard! And fried Oreos! And sand flies! Ok...maybe not sand flies.)
And part of it was because my building was burning down.
Now before you ask, I am not joking. And no, I did not CAUSE the fire in question. In fact, when it started last Thursday, I was hoping to enjoy a quiet evening at home watching quality network programming on television. I was chatting on the phone with the girlfriend when I heard what sounded like a car alarm from the parking lot below my balcony. Strangely enough though, when I peered out on to the balcony to determine which car was causing the racket, the noise actually got quieter.
So it WASN'T a car alarm. That explains why it was going for a good ten minutes without stopping. But what else would make a steady, high-pitched beeping noise in the building? Some sort of klaxon or...?
Oh hell.
I went to the door and discovered that the fire alarm had gone off. What's more, a few people were knocking on doors down the hall to let them know that this was not a malfunction or a drill. There was a fire on the fifth floor. I went inside, said goodbye to my girlfriend and grabbed my wallet, cellphone, keys, and a yo-yo. (My girlfriend mocked me for the last choice, but honestly, I figured I'd be standing around outside of my apartment for a while. May as well practice the new trick I'd been working on since replacing my wornout string at the shore!) Then it was off to the stairs, descending the 17 flights or so to the ground floor. Around the 5th, you could start to smell smoke, and it just got stronger as I moved closer to the lobby.
I wish I had the foresight to have brought a camera to document the madness outside. After being corralled outside and dodging the firemen running into the buiding, I shuffled towards the garage to see if it might be possible to get to my car. Unfortunately, even if I could get in, approximately a dozen emergency vehicles had blocked off the road. Completely blocked it. A city bus had been stopped from completing its normal route because of this! The fire itself was visible from the ground floor, but considering it was only on the second floor, it doesn't seem quite as impressive. Still, the flames were pouring out the window and licking their way up to the third floor. A helicopter circled the building with a spotlight casting the pillar of smoke rising from the blaze in a stark white light. Police pushed us back further as the fumes filled the air and made breathing more difficult. I called my family just to let them know that everything was ok, except for my building being on fire. Then a quick call to my girlfriend indicating the same.
And I figured that would be that. My girlfriend had indicated that she would be willing to pick me up if I needed a place to stay what with my apartment playing host to what seemed like the entire city emergency response team. I figured that even if I wanted to take that option, the roads were not exactly accessible what with the ambulances and fire trucks jamming up major access routes. I told her I'd call back. And a few times, I tried...but I somehow always seemed to get voicemail.
I wandered around to the back of the building and ran into a neighbor who happened to be a fellow teacher at Underwood. We stood there watching the smoke and chatting until suddenly, to our surprise, the alarm stopped beeping. The fire must have been extinguished! And just when I thought to start walking back to the front to check out the scene, who do I see coming from the direction of the garage? Yes, despite our apparent communication failure and the trouble accessing the apartment's parking lot, my girlfriend had taken it upon herself to rescue me from an evening of damage control and secondhand smoke. (Hooray for my girlfriend!)
So everything ended up well in the end. After crashing at my girlfriend's new apartment (now with working air conditioning!), I returned home the subsequent morning to find a faint aroma of smoke filling the room and my desk lamp still on from the night before. It appears the property damage was restricted to the second and third floors, where boards are still up over the window frames since the firemen had to smash the glass to get inside. There are air purifiers in the lobby and it still smells smoky in the stairwells. But otherwise, things were ok. Which is good, because it would be a shame if my apartment went up in smoke mere weeks before I pack everything up to go to graduate school.
More on that score later.
