One glorious morning, as I had just dropped off one client, I receive a request for a pick-up less than a block away from my next client.   I pull up and she get’s in my vehicle and we begin our trip to her destination.  After a pleasant greeting and short introductions, she gets on her phone and calls a couple of people.   Once she gets off her phone and after asking what I do for a living, besides rideshare driver, she engages me with the following conversation.

 

Her:  You know why I love firemen?

Me:  Uh oh, I don’t know.

Her:  Because I was in a fire!

Me:  Oh were you?

Her:  That building you picked me up was on fire.

Me:  Oh wow.  Okay.

Her:  And here’s the story, I know you like fire stories.  So, I’m sitting at home, I smell the smell coming out of the vents and I go “Uh-Oh that’s not a good smell.  That smells too chemically! There’s something wrong!”  So I called the front desk, and Jason, we just left, and I said “Jason? It smells like a fire.”  And he said, “Actually, there is a fire.  The seventh floor is on fire.” He said, “But you cannot leave your unit.”  So then I go, “Holy” (as she puts her hands up)

Me:  Crap?

Her:  And I didn’t know, of course now I know you can’t leave.  So then now, I go and look in the hall and it is slightly smoky.  It’s not that bad and I’m kinda looking and I go, “Okay, I guess I have to stay in my unit.”  So then I call the building manager, because I’m on the board, and he said “I’m coming to the fire.  I’m on my way, I’m walking.”  And he said, “You know you gotta stay in your unit.” So I’m like, “OK” So then I hear some noise outside of my unit.  So then I DO open my door and it is black!  A minute later, you know, as a fireman, it is black! But then I see my neighbor who is disabled.  She’s on disability. She has trouble walking.  So I see her and I say, “Come to my unit and wait with me”  Because I can’t leave her in her unit.  She can’t walk.  So I said, “Come to my unit I will take care of you.”  So she comes, which was a good thing because it turned out she was right above the fire.

Me:  OH Wow

Her:  There was more smoke in her unit than in mine.  So then we go and sit in my unit and then my property manager, I call him, because you know panic strikes!  So he said, “You know, put towels under your door.”  And he forgot to say wet towels.  But we did put towels and that did help a bit.  And actually, one of my neighbors put tape around the door.  That would be smarter, but I didn’t do that sh!#!   So then  we were basically burning away in there with smoke inhalation.  So we, like, put some towels on our faces, and it was all black, my unit was completely black with smoke.  We hear them fighting the fire, they’re breaking walls down below us, we hear them fighting.  The crews are, like, fighting away, desperately, trying to kill the fire.  Uhm, so then, at one point, the smoke gets a little lighter, cause they were winning the fire.  So then at this point, I’m trying to think about my life, because you really don’t have anything to do, because, as Jesse(her fireman friend) told me later, I was on the 9^th floor and the ladder wasn’t getting to me.  He said, “Yeah, the ladder wasn’t getting to you.”

Me:  That’s right.  Anything above 5, it’s over.

Her:  Yeah, he said, “We wouldn’t be able to get to you and that would be it!”  So then time is passing, you know, we’re getting smoke inhalation, I’m thinking of my life, sending texts goodbye.  (as she laughs)

Me:  Oh My Goodness!

Her:  And then, finally, the door opens, and there’s a row, they created a wall cause you can’t see sh!#!  They created a wall with their bodies to the elevator and they go, “Do you want to leave your unit?”  And we were like, “We’re outa here!!!”  We run out of there and go down. The only thing that felt like a bummer was they didn’t have any oxygen.  We all needed oxygen.

Me:  Right

Her:  But they would’ve made us go to the hospital.  I’m like, “NO, NO, I just need a hit of oxygen.  We all need a hit of oxygen.

Me:  I need a can of Perri-AIRe!  (we both laugh)

Her:  Exactly, because our lungs were all messed up.  All messed up.   So then, we escaped, we went to the next building.  So then, my sister-in-law was a news reporter.  She was an anchor, a nightly news anchor.  She said, uhm, “You were in there?”  and I said, “YES!  I just escaped!” She said, “Okay, well, come across the street, I want to do an exclusive report with you”  Well, so I go across and there’s a fireman, a fire chief is talking… about the fire.  And so then, I see him and I grabbed him and I said, “ Thank you so much for saving my life!”  and he was like “What?!!” and was like “Oh, your welcome, Oh my God.”  And all the reporters saw me and said, “No, No, No. She’s not getting an exclusive.”  So I ended up talking to all of them. You can Google it!!!

Me:  Oh Goodness!

Her:  So then, I got to ask the fire chief, “Was there something else that I could’ve done?” and he was like, “No.  The only thing you could’ve done differently, if you really needed oxygen, was take up your toilet”  Which I was NOT going to do.  “and you could have air and you could breathe for few more hours.”

Me:  Breathe from the sewers!

Her:  So, true enough, we were in the news because we were the first high rise, at that point, that had not had a fatality cause we had done that life safety stuff.  And it turned out that the place where there was the fire, this electrical thing, because we had old electrical outlets, it stuck with the curtains and blew the whole thing. And he did not lock his door

Me:  So he got out

Her:  So the fire dudes were like, “If you had locked that door… but you had not closed it, we would have been up against it”  Instead we lost the whole floor, the whole damn floor and part of the eighth floor.

Me:  Well, you said the 8^th floor was mostly smoke damaged or actual fire?

Her:  No there was fire damage.  Yeah, they had to change the windows and the 7^th floor was down to the studs.

Me:  Oh My goodness

Her: Yeah!  So that’s my fire story!

Me:  Nice!

Her:  So that’s why I really appreciate firemen.

Me:  Or fire dudes as you like to call them

Her:  Yeah, Fire dudes knocked on the door,  and created a wall with their bodies.  Fire dudes were like, “We were able to open the door and not get a back-draft!” So yay!  That’s what Fire dudes do!

I now know how a victim of a high rise fire thinks.   The Fire Dudes are coming!!

Thanks for reading!