nyj14: fire Tuesday


After beginning to post updates on my website, I meant to move away from the lengthy email/essays you’re used to. I still intend on a digest-oriented approach, but this morning’s adventures are just too good — and the fire of inspiration too brief — to wait (sorry, I’m too sleepy for better puns).

That’s because I woke (at 7:48 a.m.) to an unexpected knock on our front door. My roommate gets there first, to greet a chartreuse-suited fireman telling us smoke and something else are currently coming from our roof (we’re the top floor). He asks for access to the fire escape, which is through the kitchen window. Gusts of frigid morning air send me scurrying for my bed again.

Erin queries an authority about their visit.

But not for long: minutes later, we’re asked to vacate the building because an electrical fire is burning in the basement (they kindly let us put on coats and socks and shoes first).

A fireman accesses the roof of 563 Lorimer St.

Once downstairs, I goggle at the array of fire trucks crammed along our little street (three; one a hook-and-ladder already reaching our roof). Once my roommate and her boyfriend join me, we decide the only thing left for us is to straggle through the bitter, wind-whipped cold to the 24-hour diner one block over. Nothin’ like greasy protein, coffee and juice-shots (you shoulda seen the glasses!) to help one handle the unexpected. The only thing missing was noisy muzac cranking “Hotel California.”

Our landlord thinks the fire was caused by recent Con Edison work in front of our house. We think it’s possibly the landlord’s fault: a house equipped with date-less, dusty fire extinguisher and countless badly wired outlets. It can’t possibly be our fault for having a power strip on (nearly) each of the 6 outlets in our small apartment. It can’t possibly be my fault for recently rewiring the light fixture in my ceiling, or my roommate’s for starting the same project in our living room...

Actually, it must be the fire gods, if I lapse into p__theism for the moment. In fact, it’s clearly Agni, that Hindu god whose name is related to the word “ignite.” After all, when I came into work this morning, handily waiting was the desk-top “Worst-Case Survival” calendar with its morning advice. The tip for Tuesday, Feb. 11? “How to Survive a High-Rise Hotel Fire.”

As Dave Barry says, “I am not making any of this up.”

posted @ 09:31 PM on Tue - February 11, 2003 remark! Email |  as quoted:
before I said ...  but more recently: 

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