fire July 3, 2009

our house boarded up

so, let me preface all this by saying that there are two drunk people who smoke in their apartments that live in our house. we are in a 3-story house with six apartments in it. we are on the first floor in the rear. the drunk man, joe, is on the second floor in the front. the drunk woman is on the third floor in the rear. last week some time we had to call the police on the drunk woman because she was in her apartment ranting about how she was going to burn the house down, and then she moved on to screaming at people on the street for an hour or so. we were inspired to get better renter’s insurance. i just got the paperwork yesterday in the mail. the drunk man, joe, has never been problematic. just pathetically wasted to the point of barely being able to make it up the steps on a regular basis.

anyway. last night we were celebrating the fact that i’d finished a big photo editing project by going to dinner around the corner at the new bar. we had come home a little before 8pm and had been in the apartment about 15 minutes when the fire alarm went off. it is piercingly loud. the dogs went a little nuts, but i managed to collar them all up while seuss was looking out into the hallway to see what was going on. the drunk lady was prancing around and screeching that there was a fire. seuss and our friend greg, who was hanging out with us, took the dogs out the front, while i ran to the back and crammed the cat in her carrier. i went out the back and up the alley, and by the time i got there, i could see the smoke pouring out of the 2nd floor front apartment. my neighbor grabbed the cat carrier from me and took Finn into her apartment. i was on the phone with the landlord screaming that the drunk set the house on fire, while seuss had gone back in to make sure everyone was out.

the fire trucks were there in about 3 or 4 minutes. they are only a few blocks away. i grabbed the dogs and brought them into my other neighbor’s house. seuss came out with his messenger bag with our hard drives in it. he had gone up to the second floor with the fire extinguisher (he used to be a volunteer firefighter) and found the drunk man standing in his doorway in his underpants, in a drunken stupor, saying his bed was on fire. i’m guessing seuss had to pretty much drag him down the stairs, otherwise he couldn’t have gotten out so fast. everyone else was out, all the pets were out, thought the drunk lady’s cat scratched her and ran off. hopefully she’ll come home.

some of the culprits

the firemen went in the front with their hoses and upstairs. they broke into the basement to turn off the electric. they broke out all the guy’s windows and water was spraying out them. they threw all his bedding and a ton of empty budweiser cans out the window. it’s all over the sidewalk still, and there is a ton of glass in the alley. we can’t clean any of it up till the insurance people look at it, we’re told.

so, there are at least 4 or 5 fire trucks out front. the whole street was blocked off. all our neighbors, some we don’t even know, were offering to help us, and take us and the dogs in, but we were well taken care of by our neighbor sarah, who had the dogs. the guy who owns the pizza place made us come in and get things to drink. the drunk guy got taken to the hospital, presumably for smoke inhalation. the drunk lady took off to stay with her kids downtown. the poor guy who just moved in a month ago and lives right above the fire was  hanging around waiting for friends to pick him and his cat up.

drunk guy's bed

at about 2:30 am our friend shana came over to take us to her place with the dogs for the night. we noticed that the landlord was still at the house, and there was a guy there starting to board up the windows. the electric had been turned on. seuss went in there with the landlord, and looked at the guy’s apartment, which is totally destroyed. miraculously, none of the other apartments are. ours, since we are in the back, doesn’t even smell like smoke. the apartment above the fire reportedly stinks, but nothing got burnt. same with the 3rd floor rear. not sure about 2nd floor rear yet. she probably has water damage at least under her door and on the hallway-side wall. the front apartment under the fire is unoccupied, and seems to have minimal water damage. we are all REALLY LUCKY. if seuss and i hadn’t been home, i have doubts that there would have been so little damage. the 3rd floor guy didn’t even hear the alarm, he just heard seuss hollering in the hallway. if we had come home a little later, our pets would have been trapped in here, because the fire people wouldn’t have let us near the place. i am so very grateful that we were home.