Fire engines suck as Saturday morning alarm clocks.
Actually, they are quite efficient. The adrenaline they cause is very good for waking, and keeping, me up.
I live a quarter of a mile from the local station, so I hear the sirens all the time. I pretty quickly learned to hear, but not be alarmed by the sirens because they were always winding up and continue on the roads by my apartment building. Over the last seven months, there have been a couple times where the sirens didn’t continue by. This amped me up, until I realized that those cases were various medical emergencies; usually one truck (on the street, because they can’t fit in to the tight turn-around “lollipop” entrance to my building or the building next to me) and one ambulance in front of the building. Those still kind of amp me up now, but now in the sense that I’m anxious for the families and I always send a quick prayer that everyone will be okay.
This morning at 6:30 was different. The sirens woke me up, barely. Usually if they wake me up now, it’s only enough to tune in and realize that the sirens are continuing on. I heard the sirens tail-down in front of my building or the neighbor building and thought, “Rats, someone isn’t having a good morning. I hope everything will be okay.” Then it really slowly percolated through my brain that I heard more than one truck, and didn’t hear any ambulances.
My eyes flew open. I leaned out of bed, looked out the blinds, and saw flashing red lights reflecting off the windows across the courtyard. People huddled in the courtyard
Crap.
I need to describe these buildings, because it’s important to my interest in what’s going on in front of me. Both buildings have at least 16 floors. My building is “U” shaped and the building next to me is “J” shaped. The “J” is splinched to the “U” to form an “E” made of two buildings of different styles. Really sort of odd looking, that’s why ‘splinched’ is the only word I can ever think of to describe it. My apartment is where the “U” and the “J” meet; my apartment shares a wall with the other building on the splinch line. When I look out my windows, I look to the other building’s courtyard, not mine. So even though it’s not my building the fire fighters are at… really they both are my buildings and if fire would happen to rage through one, the other is at risk.
I was glued to my window trying to take the temperature of what was going on; faulty fire alarm or real fire. The people milling about were fairly calm and I realized that I could not see any hoses being run into the building. Of course, there was at least one fire truck behind the building that I couldn’t see, so ‘faulty fire alarm’ wasn’t a solid assessment that I was ready to make. At this point, I mentally ran my ‘bug out’ checklist as I put on jeans. No alarms going off in my building, but like I said, the buildings are attached. And better safe than sorry.
As I was getting dressed, I saw four fire fighters exit the building and walk, at a leisurely pace, back to the truck. Good sign. I looked back to the main entrance and saw another come out and give the people the all clear to return to the building.
Whew.
By now, it’s about 7:15 on a Saturday morning. I think it’s safe to say that I’m awake for the day. But I really am happy that everything turned out okay and that I didn’t have to bug out of the building. But I’m probably going to take a nap later…it is New Year’s Eve, after all.
