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August 27, 2006

Unsettling, to Say the Least

Usually I structure blog posts around some sort of theme, like, Figs and Date are Good, or Eat Tomatoes Now, or somesuch. Recent events don't fall into an easy category. The only word I can think of to describe what we found on coming home from upstate is "unsettling".

We had a great week in the woods, doing the same woodsy and watery things we usually do, but with a good dose of baking thrown in this year, since I was in a baking mood. I was a little worried about our place, in my little paranoid way, but that's normal. The weather upstate had been wonderful (except for a rainy weekend), so we'd been able to do lots of lake swimming and some hiking and boating. We came home Monday night at about 11 p.m., feeling ready to unpack the car and go directly to bed.

As we were hauling bags up the stoop, our neighbor met us at the door. "There's been a fire," she said, "and your apartment is damaged." I think we stared at her blankly -- there's really no way to know from that sentence exactly how to respond -- I just wanted more information. I also felt one of those "I knew it," feelings -- not about the fire specifically, but about having things too good.

No one had been hurt, but there had been a fire in the apartment below ours, and everything in that apartment, she said, had been destroyed. In ours, they had to make holes in the wall to see if the fire was climbing up the beams, but the fire miraculously hadn't made it up there. She also said there was no power, and we should leave our stuff in the hallway before bringing it upstairs. I don't think all of the information she gave us really sank in one way or another, because it really wasn't clear what state our apartment was in. I'm very attached to my home -- I feel reassured when I'm there -- calm and settled. I've finally created a living space that's comfortable and comforting -- having that suddenly in jeopardy would be like losing my grip on reality for a bit. As I've been explaining to people this week, my stuff is my home, and it grounds me. Furniture from my great aunt's house, or the nicer-than-usual futon, or my computer with all of my photos, or the one nice piece of artwork we own, given to me by my mother for my 25th birthday... all of these things help convey who I am, or who I'd like to be. It has taken years to assemble a living space that feels like a real home and not a dorm room, too.

Still a little bit shocked by the whole thing, we followed my neighbor and her flashlight up the stairs. There was a sooty black mess all along one wall, and the door to the apartment with the fire looked like this:

The whole building smelled of smoke. Our door and our next-door neighbor's door both had new locks, since the doors had been forced open by firefighters. Inside, we saw this:

Which freaked me out a little, because I didn't understand at first that the table that's usually there was just moved to another room (it seemed like furniture might somehow have been reduced to rubble or something). Once we had walked around a bit, we realized that while there was a lot of plaster on the floor and some unsightly holes, we hadn't lost anything. The firefighers had carefully moved stuff out of the way before opening up the walls.

We were extremely, extremely lucky. Lucky that neighbors were home to call the fire department, lucky that the fire didn't get hot enough to climb up into our place, lucky not to have any water damage, etc. Five more minutes, and our apartment would have looked more like the one downstairs.

We also found that we had electricity and running water, so it seemed more feasible that we could stay there. Once we had figured all of this out, we got the rest of the story from our neighbor -- thank goodness she was there to explain it all.

The fire started at about 10 a.m. that morning. It allegedly started because an air conditioner was using a regular extension cord, and that cord ran underneath a mat and a box of kitty litter. A substandard extension cord for an air conditioner is unsafe to begin with, but the added insulation of the stuff on top of it meant the heat had nowhere to go. No one, aside from three cats, was in the apartment when the fire started. Our downstairs neighbor heard noises in the backyard and thought someone was throwing stuff out the window. When she went out to see what was going on, she saw a red-hot beam of wood upstairs. She called the fire department, which had just received a call from another neighbor, and then ran to get everyone out of the building.

The fire department arrived in three minutes (three minutes, god bless them). I don't have many details from this part of the story, but I know they hosed down the place and then went all over the rest of the building to make sure the fire hadn't spread. They had to knock out our bathroom window, and they brought out one of the cats from the apartment where the fire started. They went up to the roof, and they kept people outside of the building until it was safe.

It must have been terrifying to watch, especially for those with pets still inside. I'm not sure when the owner of the apartment with the fire came home, but I'm sure he was devastated -- he's a nice guy, and he's lost what we came so close to losing. Apparently he had a roommate, too, so he's also lost stuff. They were able to salvage some things, I think, but I don't think it could have been much. [Update: We just talked to the guy, and he seems to be coping pretty well. Some important things, like photography and artwork, were salvaged from a room that wasn't too damaged. The microwave and light switches "melted," though, and it seems like work on the place will take quite a while.]

Of the three cats, I know that the one rescued got attention immediately -- they had a pet-sized oxygen mask -- but died soon after. Another cat was outside of the apartment and was under a car on the street, but was foaming at the mouth and wouldn't drink or eat. At 6 p.m., the owner was convinced to go back upstairs to look for the third, and found him burned badly. The two that were found alive were taken to the vet, but I don't think either made it [Update: The two taken away might be okay]. For me, the loss of pets -- and the trauma they endured -- seems horribly depressing.

Our downstairs neighbors didn't have power afterward because the water damage made it too risky to turn on. She got power back 24 hours later, but it sounds like the ceiling is a mess and is probably making things very difficult for them.

This all happened a week ago. Since then, insurance assessors have been through, and our landlord kindly cleaned up the plaster mess. It was still pretty gritty, so D and I have been giving the place a good scrubbing. I've also been introduced to the miraculous Mr. Clean Magic Eraser. Our friends, who have two great danes with projectile drool, told us months ago that it was great for cleaning stuff off the walls. Since seeing the black mess on our hallway wall was depressing to come home, to, I finally picked up the stuff. Those black streaks in the photo above -- they're pretty much gone. It's been cathartic, cleaning everything up.

I'm still feeling unsettled -- it's odd to have your private space suddenly seem so fragile. For the first few days I felt like I was in the twilight zone.

It still smells like smoke, and we have a boarded-up bathroom window and some holes in the walls, but in general, the place is feeling like it's back to normal. That will probably change when we start to have contractors in here working on the place, but that I can deal with.

Fires happen with much greater frequency than I'd understood. We're all packed into small spaces in the city, so fires in other places are more likely to affect more living space than one. The fact that we live in a brick building saved us, too -- a frame would have been a different story.

I felt like sharing the story with people right after it happened, mainly so that I could understand it in a larger context, because I was having a little trouble coming to terms with how close we came to a disaster. It just felt strange, especially when our landlord reminded me that five minutes more of that fire would have burned our place. Sharing it here also seems like a helpful thing to do, since it's a good cautionary tale about air conditioners and extension cords.

And just so you're not traumatized by the photo above and worried about us, here's a photo of that same spot today:

I'll be posting more uplifting stories about kayaking on secluded lakes and learning how to bake good sandwich bread soon, I promise.

Posted by csageday at August 27, 2006 03:46 PM

Comments

Posted by: melissa at August 28, 2006 11:34 AM

Posted by: Cindy at August 28, 2006 12:15 PM

Posted by: melissa at August 29, 2006 01:37 PM

Posted by: Cindy at August 29, 2006 04:35 PM

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