gwendolyn
Ideal_Rock
- Joined
- Aug 4, 2007
- Messages
- 6,770
11:30pm here now. We just got back into our flat after having to evacuate an hour and a half ago due to a van that caught fire just a few feet (6'' tops) from our apartment building! Everyone''s safe, just so you know there''s nothing to worry about, but it was a bit of a surreal experience.
There was a guy in the van when the first flames were witnessed--J had gone to bed about 15 minutes earlier when I heard, "Can you get out? Can you get out?" being yelled over and over and lots of other unintelligible shouting and screaming, so I went to look out the front window to see what was going on. (Although to be fair, we get lots of loud screaming when people have been drinking, so at first I just thought it was some drunks walking home and fighting with each other.) But, out in front of our building were a small group of people--most of our neighbours from our building. One of them saw me looking at gestured for us to come out. Still not sure what was going on but hearing the shouting, I walked past the kitchen on my way to the bedroom to tell J something might be up, and the whole kitchen was so bright and lively dancing with orange and yellow light from the van that was on fire just outside. The flames were huge (we''re one floor up from the ground and the flames were reaching up to the middle of our kitchen window and sometimes higher) and getting bigger by the minute as random things inside the van were cracking and exploding (nothing major, but big enough to be rather scary).
The man in the van thankfully had gotten out safely and his friends had him sitting up against a wall to wait until help came. I saw the ambulance come and he was taken away, presumably to the hospital. He had walked (with his friends'' help) to the wall, so he''s probably going to be fine.
Anyway, after seeing this craziness out the window, I woke J up and we went to wait outside with our neighbours, one of whom very nicely had said he was about to come up and knock on our door to get us out of the building if we didn''t come out soon. (He was afraid we were asleep and that our fire alarms wouldn''t work with the source of the fire on the outside of the building--and he was right, they didn''t!) After about 5 minutes of waiting, the fire brigade came, put out the main fire, and then went in to pull smaller items out that were still smoldering. Soon after that, we went back inside.
Our flat still has some residual smoke in it, so my eyes are burning, which is slightly annoying but obviously no big deal. But you know what J did when we got back inside? Went right back to sleep.
Not bothered at all...whereas me, it''ll take me ages to be ready for bed now! Am slightly wired after seeing those flames so close to our flat!
Anyway, just felt like I''d share our little adventure with y''all tonight, but we''re all fine, no one''s seriously hurt or anything. And the most ironic thing is that, only 10 minutes before this all started, I had just given myself a new status update on Facebook: "Gwen has no status update for you." Won''t catch me writing that again--apparently it just tempts fate!
There was a guy in the van when the first flames were witnessed--J had gone to bed about 15 minutes earlier when I heard, "Can you get out? Can you get out?" being yelled over and over and lots of other unintelligible shouting and screaming, so I went to look out the front window to see what was going on. (Although to be fair, we get lots of loud screaming when people have been drinking, so at first I just thought it was some drunks walking home and fighting with each other.) But, out in front of our building were a small group of people--most of our neighbours from our building. One of them saw me looking at gestured for us to come out. Still not sure what was going on but hearing the shouting, I walked past the kitchen on my way to the bedroom to tell J something might be up, and the whole kitchen was so bright and lively dancing with orange and yellow light from the van that was on fire just outside. The flames were huge (we''re one floor up from the ground and the flames were reaching up to the middle of our kitchen window and sometimes higher) and getting bigger by the minute as random things inside the van were cracking and exploding (nothing major, but big enough to be rather scary).
The man in the van thankfully had gotten out safely and his friends had him sitting up against a wall to wait until help came. I saw the ambulance come and he was taken away, presumably to the hospital. He had walked (with his friends'' help) to the wall, so he''s probably going to be fine.
Anyway, after seeing this craziness out the window, I woke J up and we went to wait outside with our neighbours, one of whom very nicely had said he was about to come up and knock on our door to get us out of the building if we didn''t come out soon. (He was afraid we were asleep and that our fire alarms wouldn''t work with the source of the fire on the outside of the building--and he was right, they didn''t!) After about 5 minutes of waiting, the fire brigade came, put out the main fire, and then went in to pull smaller items out that were still smoldering. Soon after that, we went back inside.
Our flat still has some residual smoke in it, so my eyes are burning, which is slightly annoying but obviously no big deal. But you know what J did when we got back inside? Went right back to sleep.
Anyway, just felt like I''d share our little adventure with y''all tonight, but we''re all fine, no one''s seriously hurt or anything. And the most ironic thing is that, only 10 minutes before this all started, I had just given myself a new status update on Facebook: "Gwen has no status update for you." Won''t catch me writing that again--apparently it just tempts fate!
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