One fateful night a few years ago, I crawl into bed and set my alarm for the next morning. It’s been a normal day of work, and once again nighttime has crept upon me and I’m getting to bed a little later than I should. About three hours into my sleep, I say this amount of time so you understand I am now in deep sleep and I have obviously not had enough sleep to be coherent if awoken, I hear the loudest, most hideous noise I have ever heard in my life. It’s like a fire alarm, but it’s vibrating through my body it’s so loud.
My eyes tear open and it takes me a few minutes to remember where I even am. My thoughts cannot fully complete in my head because every two seconds another loud blast is emitted from somewhere near me that I cannot locate. In my daze, I believe it is my alarm battery and grab the step stool from my pantry. I climb the few steps and begin hitting the alarm with my shoe to make it stop. It’s now hanging by a wire from my ceiling but the noise IS STILL BLASTING.
Perched upon the top step in tears, shoe in hand, wearing only a large t-shirt and undergarments, I hear a frantic knock on my front door. I go to open it, and my neighbor is standing there with wide eyes. “Are you ok?” she asks. At this time, I see flashing red lights in the hallway outside my apartment, and the source of the noise is finally found. My whole building is hearing it. I mutter that I’m ok, when she points to something behind me and screams. I wheel around and see that water is gushing into my living room from the balcony door, window, and outlets along that wall. My neighbor, being the hero she is, runs off saying she’s going to make sure my upstairs neighbor is ok.
I, however, still in a daze, think that the rain must be really bad. I go to the window and look out, but can’t see past all the water. So, naturally, I open the door to the balcony and immediately enter and participate in the ice bucket challenge. I am soaking wet. I don’t mean wet like someone dumped a water bottle on me, I mean wet like someone threw me into a pool. I close the door, now semi-awake, and realize that my brand new living room furniture is about to be ruined. Adrenaline pumping, I hulk move my couch, love seat, coffee table, end table, and TV stand with TV into my dining room area.
If someone had told me that I would manage this feat by myself at four in the morning, I would not have believed it. I did not know I was capable of such strength. Once the furniture is out of the way, and I’ve put down all of the towels I own where the water is coming in, I completely freeze. What do I do now? Is there a fire? Is this the sprinkler system from the upstairs neighbor and I’m about to be buried in the remnants of their apartment?
Frantic, I call my mom. I still can’t keep many thoughts together through the blasting fire alarm, but manage to tell her that the fire alarm is going off and water is coming into my living room and I don’t know what to do. This is the part that gets embarrassing, because I basically revert to a child.
She asks me if I have checked my apartment or the hallway for fire or smoke… Through the loudest fire alarm I had ever heard, I had not even thought about checking for FIRE OR SMOKE. Why had I not done that already?! I walk around, nothing is on fire or appears to be smoking. Then she asks me if I’ve gathered up my valuables and dog. Nope, my dog is chilling on the bed wondering what the heck is going on, and I don’t even know where I’ve left all my valuables. What are my valuables even? How had I, in several decades of living, not thought about what I would want to save from a house fire?
With prompting from my mom, I grab my computer, camera, and phone, along with charging cords, my purse and passport, my childhood teddy bear, and a few pieces of jewelry and stuff them all into a backpack. I then gather my dog and her favorite toy and blanket and put them in her traveling crate. I’m standing there, surveying my good work, when my mom asks me what I’m wearing.
It’s then that I realize, through my conversation with my neighbor, my furniture moving, and my packing, I am still not wearing pants or a bra. She instructs me to find pants, bra, coat, socks and shoes (which took a lot of fumbling around to find) and walks me through putting them on. When I told you this was embarrassing, I was not joking. Through the panic of being woken mid-sleep, and the loud alarm going off every few seconds, it was a miracle I even dialed my mom. She tells me to get out of the building, and wait across the street for the fire department to check it out.
So I’m sitting on my dog’s crate on the sidewalk across from my building, and am realizing I am the only one who has evacuated. There is not another person in sight. I look either homeless or creepy, under these circumstances. The fire truck pulls in, and I follow them up to my apartment (as I’m the only one there to tell them what’s happening). I was hoping with this mess I’d get to see at least one cute firefighter, but alas, they were all much older, and in hindsight I am very thankful that only a few people saw me in my dad’s old, wet t-shirt and scrunchie that night.
They end up kicking in the door to the apartment above me (which was vacant) to find nothing wrong. They come back to me, and survey the water coming in. One of them tells me I should go open the balcony door, and I know exactly what’s coming for me. I had already done that, and I did not want to relive it. I look skeptical, and they start to laugh. “Obviously joking! That’s a terrible idea!” they say. “Ha-ha” I force myself into some mild laughter, as it didn’t seem like such a terrible idea before I did it but am now fully aware of the consequences.
A few of them notice the fire alarm dangling by a wire, clearly beaten in the night’s events, but thank god none of them speak up. They leave soon after, as it looks like there is a broken sprinkler pipe in the wall/ceiling of my living room, and unfortunately there’s nothing they can do about that.
Remember the hero neighbor? She comes back into play, and tells me maintenance has already been dispatched and they should be here any minute. So I sit in my apartment and watch it rain, until maintenance arrives and shuts off the water (and fire alarm). He says repair people will be in to fix it in about an hour (at this time, it’s 7am). There’s no way I can sleep after three hours of sheer panic, so I sit in complete silence for an hour until the repair people show up. To tell you that I took silence for granted is a complete understatement.
I wait there another two hours for them to fix the pipe, and leave fans so that mold/mildew doesn’t develop. Somehow I manage to go into work and work the rest of the day, and after a few days of the fans I put my living room back into order.
This ordeal made me realize I am not as prepared as I thought I was, and I am definitely not as good in emergencies as I thought I would be. I stood in the middle of my living room, soaking wet, in basically just a t-shirt, panic stricken. In a fire alarm, I didn’t think to check for FIRE. My neighbor had to alert me to my living room flooding because I HAD NOT NOTICED. Not only was I not prepared, but I was not mentally present AT ALL. The lights were on, but nobody was home. If not for my neighbor and my mom, I honestly wonder what would have happened that night.
It is so hard to prepare for something you have not been through. People have told me about house fires, and in a calm state of mind I could have easily told you what I would have done if it happened to me. But then it happened, and I did none of those things. Because I only gave it a thought here and there, it was not something that was instinctual.
Tornadoes happen all of the time here, so if I heard a siren I would immediately grab my comforter, water, and phone, and get into the bathtub. I’ve done it a few times, so even when panic sets in I still know what to do. But a fire alarm was not something I’ve had practice with, or thought about much, so in that moment I felt completely helpless.
Thankfully, no one was harmed and I was in no real danger, but now I think through what I would do in various emergencies that really could happen to me. What would I grab? What would I do first? And most importantly, who are the people I can call upon to help?
This situation taught me what being prepared actually looks like, and it includes having a pair of shoes and pants by my bedside. While we don’t want to dwell on negative events that haven’t even happened yet, I do believe there is a lot to gain from occasionally checking in on those emergency plans of yours.
So be bold, babe, and keep your bra where you can reach it.
xoxo,
Bold Babe