E-V-A-C-U-A-T-I-O-N!

I tend to be a pretty heavy sleeper, so when I awoke on my own in the middle of the night—that was reason enough to be a cause for concern. I didn’t know what triggered it. I just remember waking up with my heart racing. I couldn’t remember having a wild dream that shook me awake, so what was it? Then I smelt it. . . and now I really was afraid. I jumped out of bed searching for the source. Had there been combustion in the radiator? Was the smoke only in my room? I opened my door to see what was going on, but when I did, a whole cloud of smoke spilled into my room, I could barely breath, I yelled for my roomy to wake up, but she was totally out. I came right up to her ear yelling, but she’d barely budge—I finally got her coherent enough to sit up, and told her to get out of the house. I ran upstairs and found my other roommate’s door closed, so I knocked loudly and then just opened it. Lex and her friend that was in town were just waking up, taking a second to comprehend what I was shouting at them, and then Lex got a whiff of it—that woke her up. She yelled, “I can smell it! We have to evacuate NOW!!! The smoke was getting so thick it was making us nauseous. We hurried down the stairs and into the street. I took a few breaths and then ran back inside to get everyone else on the upper floors. Just as I was coming back into the house I heard Thomas, our neighbor that lives on the top floor with his wife, bolting down the stairs. He’s a huge black man that is the man of our house, and is always doing everything in his power to protect his all of us, his girls, and let us know that we’re safe. So I was concerned when I saw him holding what appeared in the smoke to be guns in each hand, yelling, “Where’s the fire! Where’s the fire?!” As he got closer I saw that they were actually just fire extinguishers he was holding, I guess that made more sense ;) He bolted towards the kitchen, where my roommate was just emerging from, carrying a very large pot. She had accidently left something that she’d knitted on the stove to boil, trying to shrink it, all night. It was totally an accident, but it was scary to think of worse scenarios that might have been taken place. Well our house reeked, and was filled with smoke, so we opened all the doors and a bunch of windows trying to release all the smoke that was trapped in there. We got to sit out in the street for a while, waiting for our house to air out. I pulled out Fuzz’s blanket and my roomies and I wrapped it around all of us to help keep us warm while we waited. After a while, when we finally dared go back inside, Thomas took us into the kitchen and gave us a lesson on fire safety and taught us all how to use the fire extinguisher. We had the kitchen door open, still venting out the smoke in the kitchen, and Thomas told us to all try to get back in bed, and watched the door for us so that we could feel safe leaving it open. I’m so lucky to have such good neighbors! He is a security guard for a living, so he’s passionate about making others feel protected and safe. I had to keep the window open in our room because I was still struggling breathing in there. The smoke smell was disgusting, it smelt like burnt hair, not like burnt cookies—this was so gross, and the smell had permeated throughout the house and onto everything—even our food. I was just starting to fall back asleep when I heard something squeaky and squeally. . . I could barely make out my roommate Kelly clear across the room, trying to close her window. My heart was racing, I felt like I was suffocating, so I yelled across the room, “Don’t close the window—I can’t breathe—it’s still all smoky over here!” Poor Kelly, she was like, “But I’m so cold.” I told her that I would get her more blankets but that we had to leave the window open. She was persistent—so we compromised at closing it half way.
It took me a while to calm down enough to go back to sleep—I get very claustrophobic anyway and so I think that added to the stress of it all making me feel smothered in my bed, and my asthma was flaring up; in all honesty, I didn’t know how harmful the smoke was to our bodies—I was prayerful that we would even all even wake up the next morning. I was so glad when we all did;)
It was Sunday, so we all got dressed and ready for church. I put on so much lotion and perfume trying to mask the horrendous smell—but I could still totally smell it on me. I was sure that the majority of it would air off though on our walk to the subway, but it didn’t. I found myself profusely apologizing to those whom I sat by in church. I tried not to move, because each time I did—I’d get a strong whiff of myself, and was sure that those beside me were getting it as well.
I’m just so grateful that I didn’t wake up to flames, because it could very well have turned into that. Oh we laugh about it now— but I think some big time lessons were learned, and I think that we’ll all be a lot more cautious from now on, I sure hope we all will;)