The joys of communal living

"I had a dream last night that there was a fire in the condo. I dreamt that all of your sneakers caught fire. I could actually smell the rubber burning, it was that real."

-- my brother in law to me, shortly after I moved in to the new and improved crap shack.

One of the most overlooked (and subsequently scariest) pitfalls of living in an apartment building is that you're at the mercy of the stupidity of those around you. This was a great fear of mine last year when I lived at the Original Crap Shack, as the building was filled with scummy people who I'd put little past (yes, I'm thinking of them using the lobby and elevators as a urinal, or worse).

My night was a quiet, but good one. With pretty much everyone I know in Vancouver at nash this weekend, I stayed in tonight. I rented and watched 2046, a movie that a classmate from last semester did a presentation on, wrote about basketball, watched a lot of basketball and transcribed a long-ass interview. I did all of this in the reverse order that I wrote it. I talked with my brother and Chloe online before extreme fatigue hit me and at 3am, I called it a night. I was sawing lumber by 3:30.

About 90 minutes later, the threshold on the stupidity dam gave way. I woke up just before 5am to what I thought at first was my alarm clock—which is weird because I didn't set it. It took me a second to realize that it wasn't my alarm clock at all, but in fact the fire alarm. To grasp the full chaos that the alarm inspires, combine the buzzer setting on your alarm clock, turn your alarm's volume up to full and strap it to your left ear. Then have someone blow a whistle in sync with the squealching noise that the alarm makes in your right ear. Throw in a slow strobe light with the noise and you're pretty much where I was about an hour ago.

My reaction to the alarm was admittedly stupid. When I realized what it was, I didn't take to the lessons pounded into my head as an elementary school student. I didn't get dressed and bolt out of the apartment. I first looked out my window to see if anyone had evacuated yet. No one was in the parking lot. My next thought was that my worst fears had been confirmed. The stub of a match that I had used to light a candle earlier in the night had started a fire. I opened my bedroom door half-expecting to see my apartment up in flames. It wasn't. I then thought of what my brother in law, Tom, had said to me when I first moved in. That has stuck with me over the last five-plus months and I've gone to borderline obsessive-compuslive lengths to ensure that I don't accidentally burn the place down with candles or through letting the lint pile up in the dryer. Whatever was wrong apparently wasn't my fault. I then looked out the front window again, this time from the living room to see what was going on. I could see the strobe light staggering its way across my building, synchronized with the loud whistle noise that went with the alarm. I could hear people opening their doors and looking down the hall to see what was going on. I went and put some pants and a shirt on, then peered down the hall. I saw a few people with coats on, and lots of people who I think/hope had the same routine as me up to this point.

With the sounds of firetrucks on their way, I decided it was time to evacuate. Pathetically, my first thoughts went to my sneakers. There was no way I could get to them all. "Should I grab the black and red Jordan XI's?" I asked myself. Instead, I grabbed my laptop, cell phone and recorder, my backpack and my coat, and got out. As I made my way through the parking lot, I thought of my Air Jordan X's, still sitting in their box, in pristine condition. I've never worn them and now I might never get to. The thought was interrupted by the shrill voice of a young blonde woman who was shreaking at people to get away from the door. The fire, a small one, was in a ground floor suite, about as far from my apartment as it could possibly be (asshole for thinking this way). The woman was trying to explain what had happened to a small group of people, saying that she came home to someone passed out inside the apartment, there was smoke and she pulled the alarm. "I'm sorry I woke you all up, but I didn't want you to die!" was what she screamed before making a phone call.

By now, the firetrucks were pulling into the lot. The firemen (no women sighted) were directed to the proper apartment. When the screen door was opened, the strong smell of a grilled cheese sandwich filled the parking lot. The apartment looked smokey, but smoke didn't billow out of the living room or anything. It was a very small fire. A few minutes later, we were told it was safe to go back in. Once inside my apartment again, I took a video of the scene. You can hear the alarm in the background. My time guesstimations are admittedly ridiculous. My apologies.



Briefly, a list of what made this a horrible evacuation, some of these things I'm guilty of too:
- people taking forever to get out of the building.
- when people finally leave the building, they all flock to the site of the fire.
- people standing way too close to the builiding when it's been evacuated.
- people not leaving their apartments despite a slew of firetrucks showing up, then stupidly watching from their balconies while the situation was sorted out.
- leaving my black/red Jordan XI's to potentially burn. What was I thinking?