Alarmed

Twice in the past week I’ve dreamt I was inside a burning building. This probably has something to do with the events of last Saturday afternoon.

At about 4:30pm that day, I was sitting on my couch reading a book. I heard a small commotion coming from my neighbors above and to the right of me, and I figured they were just being rowdy or arguing, as they are wont to do. A woman yelled, “Get out!” and there was the sound of a door opening and fast footsteps in the corridor above me.  I thought this was just the argument’s climax, but then the woman began yelling, “My house is on fire! My house is on fire!” I stopped my reading and stood up.

I heard an alarm go off in their apartment, and the woman kept yelling. Then a shrill sound pierced the air in my apartment—the building’s fire alarm had been pulled.  In the past, I’ve wondered which items I would gather and take with me if I were in a fire.  In my imagination, I’d take a quick inventory and go around picking up the most important things, things I just couldn’t do without.  There would be enough time to give my apartment a once-over.  In that moment last weekend, I learned different.  I grabbed my keys, my cell phone, my money clip, and stuffed them into my pockets.  I glanced around the room and thought, “Everything here is replaceable.” I opened the door and looked outside.  The woman and her two little boys had climbed into her car, in front of my apartment, and were backing out.

I walked out toward them and looked up to the second floor.  The bedroom window in their apartment was open, and flames were licking up over the sill.  The whole room appeared to be orange. The woman’s husband had uncoiled the fire hose, and was sticking the nozzle through the open window, spraying.  My next-door neighbor ran to assist him with a small kitchen fire extinguisher.  The fire went out quickly.  The husband and a neighbor reached down inside the window and pulled out a smoldering mattress.  They tossed it and a box spring into the parking lot, where the woman’s car had been parked, and soaked them with the hose.  The woman and her two little boys were still just sitting there in the idling car, backed out into the middle of the lot. 

I went back into my apartment, but the sound of the alarm was too painful.  I waited in the parking lot with several other people, until firefighters came, sirens blaring, to check on things and turn the alarm off.  I heard later that the little boys in the car had started the fire.  The parents had pushed the bed up against the baseboard heater and told the kids not to turn the heat on.  But apparently the boys had ignored this command in the same way their parents had ignored good judgement.  I came home from work on Monday to find a note taped on my door and every other door in the building. It recommended keeping furniture away from baseboard heaters.