Two Plus Two Newer Archives - OT: My Apartment Building Caught on Fire (Trip Report)

It's Saturday morning. I'm up early for some reason. It's around 9:30. I'm sitting on my couch playing FFXII when I start to smell smoke. Almost immediately after the smell, comes the sound of a smoke detector. I look around my place. There's nothing burning. It's not any of the smoke detectors in my place. So I open the front door and the door directly acrossed the landing has thick black smoke billowing out of it. It wasn't a little wisp of smoke either. I'm talking thick black smoke pouring through every crack in their door.

I ran back in and grabbed a few key things; jacket, shoes, smokes, and ran outside. On the way down I gave a quick slam on the other doors. To be perfectly honest, I was much more concerned with saving my own ass. I ran down the steps barefoot, slid my shoes on at the bottom of the steps, and walked outside. I recognized one of the people there. He was from the smoke-filled apartment. He didn't have any more of a clue than I did, staggering around in a hungover daze. He said he called the fire department. Luckily, there's a firehouse directly acrossed the street but it was a Saturday morning so there was no one there. It would take them a while before they responded. I stood back and watched smoke stream out of their balcony and from the roof. My balcony is parallel to theirs. And then a scream.

Now you see these things in the movies and real never think anything of it. It's a lot different when you actually hear it. Pretty disturbing stuff. You know some one is in there and possibly burning alive. About that time the fire chief showed up and I jogged over to him and told the situation. I watched in awe as their balcony became completely engulfed in flames.

When the fire trucks finally arrived the flames started creeping over to my balcony. I watched in horror as my apartment was about to be next. It was a very surreal experience. You never expect this kind of thing to happen to you. They got water running just in time. Just as flames were about to reach my balcony, there were two or three hoses on top of it. Firefighters climbed up on their ladders and on to their roof. I saw them break windows out, first the windows of the apartment that was ablaze, next my balcony windows. I saw huge clouds of smoke pouring out of my apartment and I could only wonder what the damage was. Eventually, firefighters came down with the two other tenants of the apartment. One came staggering held on his feet by two fireman, the other much later in a stretcher. He was charcoal black from the smoke and ash.

From there, things died down. Red Cross came and talk to everyone, so did the news, the police, the firechief, fire investigator, etc etc. Eventually they let me back in to grab a few things including 1k I had stashed away to play that I used to play live poker which is good since I ended up spending everything but around $14 . My apartment was fairly unscathed other than the broken glass from the firemen. The whole place reeked of smoke.

I stayed in a hotel for a few days, courtesy of the Red Cross. I was bored out of my mind. I actually went and bought a Nintendo DS to keep me busy. A man can only watch the same movie so many times. Tuesday I got a call from my property manager. They told me I have to move and I have about 2 days to do it. On top of everything, no stores in Oakland had boxes. I took everything and tossed it in big heavy duty trash bags the best I could. All of my stuff was pretty safe other than they occasional glass shard. I had to buy a new PS2 though. [censored] smoke damage.

Now things are winding down. The real estate people hired movers (thank god) to help with everything. I'm in my new place now. Everything is set up. It's been a nice little break from poker and I had plenty of time to bust into Guitar Hero 2 and FFXII. Now, it's just a matter of unpacking everything.

Though the whole experience pretty much sucked, I think I got away pretty clean. Most of my stuff is ok. I'm ok. I could have very easily went out the night before and been passed out in my room and asphyxiated before I knew what happened. It turns out that the fire was started when one of the tenants fell asleep with a cigarette in his hand on the couch. The cigarette then fell down into the cushions and lit up the place. Let this be a lesson. Don't smoke and sleep.