This morning I was slowly waking up when the kids in the neighbourhood started banging on the door. They do that sometimes so I usually just ignore that. Then Merel told me that the phone and the fridge were not working. Looking at the laptop, I saw that the power just failed. So I went to look at the fusebox, which is in a sort of mini-cabinet just outside our apartment.
Opening up the door gave me a good wake-up call. There was nothing wrong with our fuses, but there was a firetruck just outside and firemen were unloading their gear. Instead of fixing electricity, I ended up helping the firemen drag their firehoses toward another apartment in the building, a mere 3 apartments away from me.
Shortly after that, when all firemen were in position, the building was evacuated and we had to spend the rest of the morning outside. The burning apartment was completely ruined and 5 more were slightly damaged. Our apartment had no damage.
Quite a few small children live in this building, which worried the police since they didn’t see that many outside. It turned out that a lot were on holiday or on a sleepover somewehere else. Nobody gut hurt in this fire, which for me was only too close for comfort and for some others has ruined their holiday/year/…
Nils says:
I reached your blog via Liferea.
I am a fireman myself and a student of fire protection engineering at the Otto von Guericke University in Magdeburg (Germany).
In order to minimize the damage a fire can cause, it is most important to take action while the fire is still developing and has not taken over the whole room yet. To save valuable minutes (or even seconds) basic and fairly cheap smoke alarms should be installed. Have them on the ceiling in (at least) the bedroom and possibly in every other room aswell, including the corridor becaue in most cases that is the way you get out.
Most fatalities are caused by smoke and not flame and that is were a smoke detector comes in handy.
I have my apartment set up with smoke alarms and I do sleep better at night.
If you have any questions about fire prevention, I am sure your local fire department can be of help.
Best regards
6 July 2008, 11:05 pmNils
matthew says:
Wow! I’m so glad to hear you are okay. That sounds a bit frightening.
7 July 2008, 4:25 pm