Wednesday, November 28, 2007

Stop, drop, and roll...

Fire sucks. Especially when you live in the south where it hasn’t rained in months, therefore making everything matchstick potential. Apartment fires have been the new “trend” in the little town I live in lately. Just this summer there have been three separate instances of apartments going up in flames, destroying belongings, and in some cases individuals’ lives. Hearing these reports sends a chill up my spine, b/c I can imagine how devastating something like this can be. However, the events that transpired tonight brought that feeling to a whole new level.

I had come home in the evening around 6 pm, I started to make dinner and the next thing I know I hear running on the steps outside my apartment and a subsequent knock on the door, “GET OUT NOW THERE IS A FIRE!” Mentally, I think, “yeah, right,” until my heart starts skipping beats and my blood pressure rises to an unhealthy level (snaps to the autonomic nervous system on this one). I quickly grab what I feel is essential to my life without possessions, namely my wallet, car keys, and passport. Why passport? I don’t know. Perhaps my subconscious thought it necessary that I not only leave my apartment but also the country to be as far away from this damn fire as possible? I run out of the building, noticing that my neighbor was in such a panic that she left her door open. It is at this moment that the realization hits me that *my* building is not the one on fire, but rather the neighboring complexes building that are about 100-200 ft away from mine. It is literally right across the parking lot. There was no way to miss it. I have never seen anything like this in my life and I was scared! The sky was filled with smoke, the whole building was consumed in flames, and I was being covered in ash by the minute. Now I have a number of friends that live in this complex, and at first I seriously thought it was one of their buildings that was on fire. After about a dozen panicked phone-calls to them and just about anyone who would be in contact with them, I finally found out that 1. It was building J that was on fire (they live in building K) and 2. They were OK, but not before I totally freaked out.

By my calculations, it only took the fire less then a half hour to completely consume the building. I entered my apartment a little after 6 pm, and I heard the sirens about 20 min after that. Whatever started that fire was major, and since these building were constructed before the NC alterations in fire-code they do not have sprinkler systems and still contain functioning wood-burning fire places. Yes, feel free to gasp now. They are the ideal tinder for a fire.

It is one thing to hear about such devastating events, but it is totally another to witness it first-hand and have friends who may be directly affected by it. Which brings me to another point, local news here is awful. In OH, if something happened to a person who was related to someone in our city, it would immediately be posted on a ticker and scrolling on every major channel. Here…nothing. So I still don’t know the fires source or if anyone was hurt…I certainly hope not.

Well, thanks for listening to me. I am starting to remember to breath now, so I think I am calming down a bit. In the meantime, I have mentally planned my own fire escape routes, namely jumping out the windows.

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