Stop, drop, and roll

Holy crap. I have had the craziest day ever. I had a whole post about babies planned, and I'll still write it, cause Dante is just too cute to ignore. But then my neighbor's apartment caught on fire.

I was taking a nap, and then lounging in my pajamas before getting ready to go to a conference about women in the workplace. And I heard a kind of rustling. I figured it was my neighbor, coming home with shopping bags. Our doors are kitty-corner, and we share three walls, so we often hear each other coming and going. We only know each other to smile and say hi, but she seems nice.

But the rustling continued. I wondered if she needed help, so I went to look. And I saw that both of our doormats were charred. From then on, I remember everything as if it happened in slo-mo. I touched her door. It was hot. I looked at the bottom. It was red. I pounded on her door. No answer. I remembered she had a cat.

I ran back inside, soaked a towel in water, and placed it by the edge of her door, blocking the smoke. I debated running outside in my pajamas, or taking the time to get dressed. I put on jeans and slip-on sneakers, while dialing the fire department. The call didn't go through. I grabbed my computer, and ran to my front door. I heard someone in the stairs, and told them to go get the concierge, there's a fire. She told me to call the fire department. Thanks, genius.

I called from my cell phone. The call went through. I waited. I grabbed my coat and my bag (with my computer in it). I wondered if I should open my windows, but remembered that the burst of oxygen from an open window can feed a fire. I keep the windows closed. I soaked my kitchen rug in water, blocked the bottom of my door, and ran down the stairs, trying to make the fire department understand me. There are a lot of r's in my address, and what with the fear, the running, and my accent, they could barely understand me.

I banged on the concierge's door. No answer. Other people came downstairs. Fuck, I had forgotten to vacate the building! How could I forget?! But it was before 5pm on a weekday, no one should have been home . . . Ten minutes later, the firemen show up. They take the time to park the truck BEFORE running into the building. The concierge is back, and she doesn't have a spare key. The doors are at least five inches of steel, and my neighbor has three locks on her door. Another ten minutes go by, while they get a ladder, raise it on the street, and break her window. I'm worried they're going to break mine by mistake, since they're right next to each other.

Black smoke is pouring out of her window. By this point, 25 minutes have gone by since I called the fire department. The concierge and I keep telling them that there's a cat inside, but they say that their job is to put out fires, not to save cats. I call the owner of my apartment, to warn him. I call Anna, to tell her I may need a place to sleep tonight. I call my mom, and start crying.

Vanessa, my neighbor, is still not back. The concierge finally got her on the phone, but it'll be a while before she gets home. All I can think of is that she's going to turn the corner and see all the fire trucks and police cars lined up, and the whole avenue smells of smoke, and she'll see her window broken in and not know if her cat's okay.

Over an hour goes by before I'm allowed back in my apartment. I'm questioned by the police (date of birth, place of birth, nationality, etc) and realize that if I were here illegally, I couldn't have called in the emergency. The police officer makes a joke about calling me later to ask "more personal questions." I notice that all the firemen and police officers are insanely good-looking. Is this like an international requirement?

I am still in my pajama top.

As I'm being questioned, Vanessa comes home. They won't let her in her apartment. I don't understand why, since they've already let me go inside. They tell her about her cat, who suffocated, while she's standing on the landing. I think this is inhumane, and insist they all come into my place. I spend the next hour with police traipsing in and out, watching Vanessa smoke cigarette after cigarette (with all the other smoke, what does it matter if my apartment smells like tobacco, too?), and cry for Minou. When she asks if I heard him cry, I say no. I wonder where her friends are.

I am lucky. The firemen opened all my windows when they came to inspect my apartment, so the smell isn't too bad. There's no damage. Vanessa uses my couch as a base to figure out what to do. The police continue to knock on my door for the next few hours.

They need garbage bags, to put the cat in. They need duct tape, to wrap up the bags. I offer rubber bands. I am exhausted and want a hot shower. But my gas heater has died. The gas was shut off, to prevent an explosion, and my heater is not going back on. I call the owner again. There's nothing he can do for now. I'll have to take cold showers. I have a gas range, so I can't cook. Or effectively wash dishes. Or heat my apartment, and it's in the low 30s.

I spend 45 minutes mopping my floors, trying to get all the marks from the policemen's charred boots off my parquet. I need to buy a new kitchen rug, doormat, and towel. They're all gone, in the fire. I go out to get a microwavable meal (chicken nuggets, I need comfort food) and a bottle of wine. I drink half of it.

I'm grateful for all of the fire education I had in the States. After talking to the fire captain, I find out that there's absolutely no fire safety education here. As in, French people might not have known to block the door with a wet towel. I doubt that did anything, but you never know.

Vanessa is gone, having packed a small bag and gone to stay at a friend's house. I can't wait to go home in nine days, where we have things like smoke detectors and multiple egresses and quick response times in an emergency. I wonder if I did everything I could, in the right order, fast enough. I'm still pretty shaken up (as you can see from the wildly swinging verb tenses used above) but realize that I'm incredibly lucky.