The Blazing Apartment Building

As told by: Nate

I awoke in the middle of the night with the need to use the bathroom.  I staggered out of bed towards my goal, when I noticed a strange light coming through the frontroom window.  It looked like a rotating orange light, like the one you see on top of some types of work trucks.  I thought to myself, 'who the hell is working on stuff at this time in the morning?' (It's about 3AM) So I walk to the sliding glass door by our balcony to try and look out into the courtyard to see what is going on.  When I came up to the glass, I saw the palm tree between our apartment building and the next completely ablaze.  Not just a little bit on fire, but like a complete raging flame.  Needless to say, I was stunned and a bit scared.  I hollered for Julie, still in bed, to call 911.  She brought the phone out to me, saw what was going on, and then opened the sliding door, yelling for everyone to get up.  In my groggy state, I fumbled with the phone until I remembered I have to hit 'send' for the call to actually work.  While I was on the phone with the dispatcher, the roof of the other building caught fire.  Julie was already heading out the door to wake others up, and to get the apartment manager who knows everyone and could make sure everyone is outside and safe.  I threw on some clothes and ran outside when I saw someone from the building across from us training a hose on the fire.  I hooked up the hose on the backside of our building and started spraying water towards the flame.  It didn't take very long for the garden hose to become completely useless, as the entire frontroom window of the top apartment was completely orange with fire, and the glass started popping from the heat.  I managed to put out the palm tree and bushes that were burning, hoping to stop the spread of the fire to other vegetation and other apartments.  At this point the fire was getting really intense and we were directed to go get some things from our place before getting outside and across the street.  The fire trucks arrived shortly thereafter and everyone made their way around the backside of the other building to get to the street safely.  At this point all we could do was watch.  It was a good thing that the fire fighters entered the scene when they did because the fire was contained to one building.  The top two apartments were completely destroyed, but they actually saved pretty much all of the furniture from one of the bottom ones.  The other bottom apartment was actually unoccupied as the tenant moved out only a day or so before!  

If you could look outside our window to where this palm tree is, you would agree just how lucky Julie and I are.  We could feel the heat from the flame when Julie opened the door to wake the neighbors.  There are bushes lining the front side of our building, as well as shrubs and trees on the side.  I haven't heard any conclusion to the investigation, but the word on the street was that it could have possibly been a stray cigarette tossed into the ground by those bushes in front of the building.  Crazy how one tiny little thing like that could cause so much destruction.

Tip of the week:  Count your blessings.