Emergency Exit

Yesterday I experienced another NYC apartment fire. That's 2 fires in 4 years, so 1 every 2 years.  That sounds pretty standard, I guess? I just couldn't believe that only a few days after writing about the Dumpster Fire of '08, here I was going through another one ( dumpster fire post).

Matt and I had woken up around 10, and  I was obliviously checking Facebook on my phone when Matt got up and went to the window.  Apparently he had been hearing sirens for a while, but I guess I had completely blocked them out (I'm used to hearing loud obtrusive noises since we live on the 9th floor of our building, on a street corner of a very busy intersection). What he saw were firetrucks raising ladders up to the building.  Awesome. 

After seeing the trucks for myself, I got dressed in record time.  When I opened the front door of our apartment, I was immediately hit by the smell of smoke which threw me into bigger panic mode.  I was ready to ditch everyone and fend for myself, but thankfully my boyfriend is my better half in that sense, and insisted we wake up the other roommates. 

We waited a few minutes for Jill to get dressed. Well, more accurately Matt waited. I was already down the hall halfway in the stairwell of the emergency exit.  "Come on! People need to hustle! I'm not waiting for everyone!"  I yelled to Matt. I guess I'd make a horrible fire-woman.

Anyway, it turns out everything was ok. We climbed down the emergency stairwell and by the time we got to the 4th floor we saw the firemen with their hoses and they told us to keep going. There were about 50 people outside, and 10 firetrucks. We heard the fire started in the laundry room, so it was isolated to the 2nd floor.  I'm happy we are alive, and that we have a fire department on our block :)  Thank you NYFD!!!

Here are some images:

View down 43rd.

Jill and Matt, post-evacuation.