fire!!

My apartment complex almost burned down tonite. It sounds silly to say that but in reality, there was a pretty decent size fire the building adjacent to mine. A fire broke out and the alarms went off. Me thinking this another fire alarm prank or some fluke ringing I went to shut my window. 2 minutes later my roomate is banging on my door telling me it was a real fire.

So we run outside to investigate and there's people running all over the place and screaming. It was like downtown Bagdad or something. about 20 feet on the first floor from my roomates side of the apartment there was a pillar of black smoke going up into the air. I saw a bunch of people trying to get the emergency hose working with little success.

There was another 'drero'(a word I just made up combining drunk and hero) trying to run into the apartment and see if there was anyone inside. If you saw the flames you would understand why this guy wasn't thinking clearly. I can't prove that he was drunk but he was definitely looking to be a hero when there was no way he could be.

I took a few steps back to get away from the smoke and I saw one of my neighbor's children. They have 6 kids. 6 very respectable, very adorable, very friendly and cute kids. I saw the oldest son running around in a panic taking action. That's pretty commendable for a high school kid. But then I started wondering where they're parents were and if I should watch over them and get them away from the smoke.

All of a sudden my underneath neighbor's wife throws a hose at me so now I'm trying to get this hose hooked up and working and it takes me a few minutes because obviously the stress has caught up to me and I'm not moving as fast as my mind wants to. Somehow the flame goes down.

The fire department shows up. Everyone is wondering is someone is inside. I have to decide on if I should stay down and see or go up and avoid it. I do know that there is a black cat that lives in that apartment and I started getting sad. Imagine anyone getting trapped in a fire regardless what or who it is.

I'll only know tomorrow what happened. I'm just thankful from what I know is that no person was harmed. Hopefully no animals. I'm feeling much better now that the smoke is out of me and I will be getting up and inspecting every single alarm that goes off from now on.