Fire

There was a fire in my building this morning, on the roof. We had a suspicion that something was up when we looked out the window and saw two people standing across the way, pointing and staring in our general direction. Suspicion increased further when we saw two firetrucks outside. Ten minutes later, the alarm went off.

(My guess is that it was a student who pulled the alarm, not the firemen. The fire department had probably already figured out it was minor and decided not to evacuate the building, and then some panicky resident saw the smoke. But who knows.)

In any case, the alarm went off and we all had to leave hastily. It was very cold and very windy. (Weather.com says: 21° F, Feels Like 5° F.) There was what seemed like a significant amount of smoke blowing around, and some people had soot on their faces. One girl had been in the shower and came out wearing nothing but a towel, dripping wet. I felt bad and would have offered her my jacket but she wasted no time dashing right past me and into an adjacent building.

A couple of us decided to make the most of the situation and go to Sunday brunch while we were waiting. After we were done eating we sat around at the table for a couple minutes, wondering if the firemen were done yet and whether we could re-enter our building. It was really cold, as you may remember, so we didn’t want to just walk back and check. I thought it would be nice if there were some way for the fire department to let us know when things were safe. Like if we all had walkie-talkies, or cell phones, and we got a broadcast when it was okay to return home.

And my next thought, which I realize is patently absurd, but which I really and truly did think, and write down so I wouldn’t forget it: Nah, what would really be cool is an RSS feed to let us know.

They could call it “Feeding the Fire.”

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