This morning I tweeted about a fire in our building and the fact that I spent the night in a hotel last night and I know if I don't write a little bit more about the fire my MoM and dAd are going to go crazy worrying. First thing first, I am okay and everyone in our building is okay.

The whole thing was scary though.

About 7pm my door bell rang and some upstairs neighbors were asking if there was anything burning (or on fire) in my apartment. Nope. Although I was in the middle of making nachos. These guys lived on the 5th floor and could smell smoke. It was about this point that my next door neighbor and colleague G. realized that it was the apartment directly above his that had smoke pouring out the window.

I decided that I'd better pack up somethings. I threw my computer, camera, passport and credit cards into a bag and grabbed my purse and G. packed up his cats. Meanwhile the guys upstairs called the fire department and we tracked down the international who's apartment was on fire. Interestingly, they were on their way downtown for dinner and made it back to the apartment before the (very old) fire trucks arrived.

At this point, black smoke was pouring out of the open windows and glass was cracking and breaking. Once the firemen showed up they had the fire out in not more 10 minutes but I'd venture to guess that from the time they were called to the time they showed up 20-plus minutes passed. It felt like ages as everyone in the  building and much of the neighborhood stood outside looking at the burning apartment.

The general sense was please don't let mine catch on fire next. Once the fire trucks arrived and you realized that they were going use a lot of water to put the fire out those of us with apartments  below the fire, started thinking: please, please don't let this flood my apartment. I guess the concrete construction of our building was an especially good thing in this case.

The fire was put out quickly and after a bit we were allowed to go back into the apartment building. The apartment that was actually on fire is in horrible shape but for the rest of us the damage seems to have been minimal. One of the neighboring apartment has a wall that bubbled from the heat but frankly I was expecting something much, much worse given the state of the burnt apartment (it's now unlivable).

My physical apartment is fine but smoky. And not campfire smoky but burning old garbage and tires smokey. Needless to say, I've got some serious loads of laundry ahead of me but I am not complaining. No I feel very lucky. Things could have been much worse.