Last Thursday night, after we had laid down to bed and K was already asleep, our fire alarm went off. I was watching Golden Girls while he snored so this sharp, loud siren punctuating our night took us both by surprise and it took a moment to recognize what was happening. We went into our living room to take stock and then I looked out our peephole to confirm it was the building, not just us. It was the building.
My first thought was the cats but I was frazzled and the noise was bothering them. My initial reaction was to put them both in the nearest bag I could find because their cages were broken apart and high on a shelf but I went into our storage room and climbed on top of the storage tubs to reach the crates. As I brought them down and the disturbing volume of the fire alarm kept reverberating through my brain, I chose quickly to assemble the easiest crate and put them both in there.
First I got River in and K found Julian trying to hide so he handed him to me and as I opened the crate door, River darted out faster than I could react. I locked Julian in and turned around to where K had gotten a hold of River. I got her into the crate and she huddled in the back, forcing Julian forward. Then I grabbed my phone and my purse, threw on a fleece, since I was still in my pajamas, and we got our keys and out the door. I don’t know how long this took us but it was likely 5-10 minutes. Slower than we’d like but there was no sign or scent of actual danger. Also, no one else was leaving their apartments. So, we went to the stairs and ran into one other person who was leaving. The hallway smelled of weed but this is Colorado, so that isn’t unexpected or abnormal. As we descended the stairs, the alarm stopped. We waited a moment and then turned around to go back to our apartment. The door from the stairwell was locked and there was no RFID pad to get in. We were locked in the stairwell.
Thankfully, after about a minute of pounding on the door, some guy let us in. Within a few seconds we were back home and the world was quiet again.
As we let the cats out, we realized that River, in her stress, had a small accident so the hoopla wasn’t over yet. We had to clean the crate and most fun of all, we had to clean up a very angry and distressed ginger without upsetting her more and setting off her seizures. It was loads of fun but within another 10 minutes, she was clean and ran off to lick her imagined wounds.
We were a bit wound up too though all of this happened within 30 minutes.
We discussed that we needed to be better prepared if it should happen again but our building is primarily concrete, which allays some fears of a fast spreading emergency situation, as opposed to if we lived in a dry wall/ wooden structure. We also decided to move the cats’ crates to an easier to reach place. The thing that got me about the whole situation finally hit me when I laid back down in bed: I’d forgotten my sister. In the moments of the rush and fear, I thought only to get the cats and us to safety. I told K not to let me forget her next time.
I can’t help feeling guilty about that, thinking of her resting in her urn and I don’t know if I would have survived if we’d lost everything but most importantly, her. I know it isn’t really her. I know she’s not really in that urn but it is what I have left.
Have you ever considered what you would take with you in the case of a fire? Have you ever experienced a moment where you actually had to gather what you could in a few brief moments?