What woke me up was the smoke and some shouting coming up from the second floor of our building. When I opened my door I saw that our entire apartment was filling up with smoke. I looked for flames and quickly and grogily concluded that it wasn't our apartment that was on fire. I flipped on the hallway lights and woke up Miriam who was sleeping in our living room. I felt the front door, in true fire safety fashion, and after I found that it wasn't hot I made my way down the thck bloom of smoke in the hallway. Coughing and gagging I opened the door at the bottom of the stairs and headed for the first floor apartment where I thought the fire was coming from. Nope, not warm to touch,no smoke billowing out from the door.
I headed back upstairs to find that Lacey had called 911 and Liz and Miriam where heading out the back door. I went back down to the second floor to tell them to get out and was greeted by a stunned neighbor who asked if I knew where the smoke was coming from. Apparently it was coming from his apartment because,well, the couch was on fire. I told him to get out again and went to find everybdoy. On our way down the back stairs, we encountered a firend of our neighbors who apparently, under several influneces fell asleep while smoking a ciggarette. He assured us that the building was not on fire and nobody was hurt but he burnt his arm. We went back upstairs to hear the roaring of fire engines and police cars. We greeted the three fire trucks and two police cars and told them it was a couch fire, not a building fire. At three in the morning, we had about eight people on the porch, twenty firefighters in out building, and a smoldering couch on the sidewalk.
I'm glad that nobody was hurt and while it's a shame that the couch was trashed at least it was only the couch that was trashed and not eight lives.
Posted by Suzanne at May 14, 2004 09:02 AM
Yikes! Glad everyone's OK.
Posted by: Andrew at May 19, 2004 11:30 AM