Bad Fires are Bad

Ok, so this blog was my idea. I suppose I should post on it every once in a while. (ok, I just checked and it's been over six months since I posted...I fail...) Anyway...

Oh right, the title of my post. I like fire. I think it's fascinating. I like "playing" with bonfires when hanging out with friends or especially when going camping. I like the smell of burnt matches. I always loved being the one to get to light the candles at dinner when I was growing up. Those are good fires. Fires where parts of buildings are burning, however, are bad fires...

So Saturday, February 27th was a fairly uneventful day. I don't think I worked. I got some cleaning done around the apt. Charleen worked. She got home from Borders at about 10:30. We went to bed early. Again, uneventful.

Sunday morning at about 12:30 AM, there's a loud bang as our front door is busted open by firemen. They barge in and start yelling to get out of the building because there's a fire. Charleen and I scrambled to put on some extra clothing and shoes. I looked around and couldn't find the cat and was told to leave him. (grrr...) Found out later that he had run back and hidden under the bed. he doesn't usually do that.

Anyway, the fire was in the apt across the hall and one door down from us. The sprinkler system in that unit went off and alerted the fire dept. and it was out within about 5-10 minutes of them arriving. That's where the 3 hour wait began. Looking back on it now with a fully rested and rational mind, it makes sense that they needed to be sure to take the time to check that there were no more hot spots or any possibility whatsoever of a fire starting back up. At that early in the morning on a half hour of sleep and worrying about our cat still up in our apt and possibly running loose? Not so reasonable. After a bit and things had calmed down I did manage to get one of the firemen to check on Slider and he let us know that he was hiding under the bed and they had closed the bedroom door so he wasn't going to run away. That helped, but the next few hours were long and there were lots of questions about the girl who lived in the apt with the fire. And then there were even more questions about her boyfriend.

Finally at about 3-3:30 we were let back in to our apt and told to grab enough stuff for the next 4-5 days. Luckily both my parents and Charleen's parents live within about 20 minutes so we had somewhere to stay on short notice without waiting for the complex to arrange for us to be put up in a hotel. Thankfully no one was hurt, nothing besides our apt door was damaged, and we were able to get back into the building in a couple of days. It also was nice to know that Slider is perfectly capable of adapting to my parent's house after being there a few days.

So yeah, that was our excitement for the end of last month. I promise to post more often than once every 7 months...(hangs head in shame).