As a weird shut-in kid who was practically raised by movies and television, I always looked at apartment living as kinda cool and vaguely anti-establishment. Consider the examples set forth in such real-life fare as WKRP in Cincinnati, How I Met Your Mother, Friends, Sex in the City, The Jeffersons, Seinfeld, Frasier, Big Bang Theory, and Rosemary's Baby.
Um, okay...well, maybe scratch that last one. Though, you know, if the rent was reasonable enough, I'd be totally cool if my neighbors were all secret Satanists. As long as they weren't also business executives and corporate lawyers, we're gravy.
Oh. Whoops...spoiler alert!
Anyhoo, beyond these frivolous motivations, there were a few more realistic ones. Even at the height of my economic earnings, the only way I could really afford a house is if it was in the boonies, about thirty to forty clicks away from whatever tenuous place of employment I was calling a "career" at that point. As a young buck from a small town, I didn't want to live in some remote, cut-and-paste suburban hell! I wanted to be in THE BIG CITY, (reasonably close to) downtown. You know, where all the action was!
Growing up, I also saw my parents periodically clobbered by the sort of unexpected expenses that only home ownership can provide. Need a new roof? Cracked foundation? Basement flooded? Well, say goodbye to five to ten thousand dollars of your savings, you starry-eyed optimist, you!
Oh, and snow. I don't wanna fookin' shovel snow.
Content in the knowledge that I wasn't going to have to re-shingle or shovel anything anytime soon, I settled into a contented snooze late on July 11'th. I was only asleep for about an hour or two before the fire alarm went off.
Now, if you've either lived in a university dorm or in an apartment building, you know to completely ignore these things. They randomly go off so often it ends up being the fire safety equivalent of the The Boy Who Cried Wolf. So, unless it keeps clanging away for a good ten to fifteen minutes or you start smell smoke or you look down and notice that your genitals are on fire, you generally turn a blind ear to that cacophonous shit.
That night was like any other night. In reaction to this angry, persistent false alarm, I just groaned, looked around, muttered in frustration...and then promptly put my head back down on the pillow.
That is until the banging on the door started.
"GET OUT!!! GET THE FUCK OUT!!! THE FUCKING BUILDING IS REALLY ON FIRE!!! GET OUT!!!"
Like a cat roused by pouring (purring?) scalding water on its ass, I went from a reclining position to standing bolt upright in 2.6 milliseconds.
ACTUAL FOOTAGE OF ME ON THE NIGHT OF THE FIRE
Oh, confession time: I've never been one to wear Ward Cleaver-style pajamas to bed (or anything for that matter), so my first inclination was to cover myself up as best I could.
'KEYS! WALLET! CELLPHONE!' my barely-conscious brain barked at me. Even though I usually kept all of this stuff together in one place, my "decapitated chicken" impression was well on point that night. A renewed volley of fists on the door nearly caused me to jump out of my finally-covered skin.
"GET OUT!!! GET THE FUCK OUT...NOW!!!"
I needed no other encouragement. I tore open the door and was immediately hit with a horrific stench of smoke and a minor stampede of my fellow somnambulistic residents.
A quick word about the smoke: it smelled like a the contents of a fireplace had spilled out of onto the floor if a Barbie factory. Hey, if in a few years I come down with a pesky case of black lung, look no further for the culprit...just sayin'.
As I stumbled out my front door, I could finally see who our guardian angel was: Gabrielle, who had thankfully replaced Mr. Mail Order Bride across the hall from us a few years back. Instead of dragging as much of her stuff out of her burning apartment as she could lug, she'd taken it upon herself to rouse and evacuate as many of her neighbors as possible. Bless her heart.
Mercifully, as soon walk out my front door and turn ninety degrees to the right, my nose is practically touching the exit to the side stairwell. As I whipped it open and stumbled down the steps, I distinctly remember someone standing in the lobby shouting at the escapees.
"DO YOU HAVE PETS??? DON'T FORGET YOUR PETS!!!"
'I don't recognize you,' my unconscious brain mumbled at me as we vomited out into the side parking lot. Immediately, my still-dulled consciousness was drawn to the side of the building closest to me, which was engulfed in a wall of flame.
Ever sit too close to a campfire and immediately realize that you done fucked up? Well, take that to the power of ten and you'll know the heat I felt that night.
The other thing I can't do justice to is the sound. It was like a ravenous, crackling roar, implacable and all-consuming. It sounded like something otherworldly, nightmare fuel. I'm telling you, there's a reason why the Greeks considered the element of fire to be equal parts destructive and intelligent.
I can't describe the gut-wrenching horror of seeing your home on fire. Your primitive lizard brain immediately tells your body to flee, post-haste, or just freeze up like a deer in headlights. Thankfully, someone infinitely smarter than me suggested that we move the car out of the side parking lot to ensure we didn't get trapped behind a bunch of emergency vehicles. After re-positioning to a side street, we watched with dread as the flames grew increasingly ravenous.
I didn't take any video during those first ten to fifteen frantic minutes. Partly because I was having a really hard time dealing with reality, and also because the whole situation felt, well, embarrassing. Given the human detritus that the building owners had been letting in lately, a part of me wasn't surprised that this was happening. And, as such, I didn't want to document this abject humiliation, the culmination of all my prescient fears.
In reality, the fire crews arrived blindingly fast but, to my shell-shocked brain, it felt like an eternity. The truth of the matter is, if they'd gotten there any later, the fire probably would have reached the roof. And, given the fact that the building was a wood-heavy structure built in the 60's or 70's, I'm convinced the entire edifice would have foundered if that had happened. And if you don't believe me, just check out the EPIC at the end of this post.
As soon as the fire crews arrived, I finally gained enough presence of mind to start taking some video. Even in my dumbfounded state, I was pretty impressed by how quickly they brought the blaze under control.
It's so strange for me to watch this now. Taken at 1:55 am, you can see that the ground floor unit is still completely engulfed in flames. There's a fire engine already on site, with more approaching sirens wailing away in the distance.
I would love to know the identity of the people milling around out front in this video. Could the person responsible for the fire be somewhere in this shot, perhaps chowing down on a big ol' bowl of regretti spaghetti? Also note that someone runs in from the right and approaches the occupants of a car parked directly across from the burning unit. Is that the wayward occupant of said unit? To this day I still have a million questions...and no source for answers.
At the very end of that segment you can see the firemen (firefolks?) repositioning the hoses and getting ready to soak the same patio where the fire started, which you can see in this next clip, taken one minute later. Note that a second fire engine is now on the scene.
In this third clip (taken at 2:29 am) you can really see the scale of the response. By then there were no less than four vehicles on Braeside. Clearly concerned about possible hot spots in the attic, the fire fighters ensconced in the side parking lot prepares to access the roof.
How they did that caught me completely by surprise: they actually used a chainsaw to cut a phreakin' hole in the eave of the building!
This next photo is of particular interest to me. Can someone in the know tell me what's going on here? Are they looking for hot spots? Is this evidence that an investigation of the fire was already well underway? I have no clue.
Taken at 3:54 in the morning, this next clip shows our street completely cordoned off and choked by an entire fleet of emergency vehicles:
Then, finally, there's this clip from a minute later, which shows the fire crew finishing its thorough soak of the attic.
And what did we do while we watched our homes go up in smoke? Well, we...
- Gossiped with our across-the-hall neighbor Gabrielle about how the fire started and why. I have plenty of thoughts about that, but I gotta keep it to myself right now. At least for the time being.
- Tried to stay warm. Even though it was a night in July, it was still pretty cold.
- Tried to stay hydrated. At one point, Gabrielle's partner materialized from out of no-where, distributing well-appreciated bottles of water. Thanks, my dude.
- Considered hanging out in bus Metro Transit had parked on Lacewood drive to act as temporary shelter. I hate to sound ungrateful, but since I despise doing that at the best of times, I opted instead to alternately freeze my ass off outside or huddle in the car for hours on end.
- Tried to get some information from the cops, but they were all universally unsympathetic, cocky and / or surly. Not sure if this is relevant, but the average age of these guys looked to be about sixteen to seventeen years old. One cop looked so young I had to resist the urge to put him over my shoulder and burp him. But I didn't cuz dat bebe was packing HEAT.
I also spoke to our neighbor who lived above us. Picture Santa Claus if ol' Saint Nick was from the Irish Loop in Newfoundland. Within seconds, I regretted talking to him because his words cut me to quick.
"OH, SHE'S GONE, B'Y," he lamented, pulling absolutely zero punches when it came to my visibly-fragile mental state. "DIDJA SEE IT? MY SON, THEY SOAKED THAT FRIGGIN' ATTIC! EVERYTHING'S GONNA BE FLOODED! THE ARSE IS BLOWN RIGHT OUTTA 'ER!"
That may indeed have been the case with Santa's digs but, when the fire department graciously let us back into the building later that night, we felt the tiniest flutter of hope. My apartment actually didn't look all that bad. Granted, in the half-light, I could see some pretty sizable dark spots in the ceiling and water was pooled in the entrance, the kitchen, the dining room and the hall leading to the bathroom. But, from what I could tell, most of my collectibles, including hundreds of games, toys, movies, books and whatnot, looked reasonably intact. Was this a miracle?
"You know, you might have gotten off lucky," one of the firemen observed as he escorted us around.
After gathering up some key valuables and enough clothing and supplies to keep us sustained for the foreseeable future, we were asked to evacuate for the second time that night. But this time we had no idea when, or if, we'd ever be allowed back in.
That's when an even more disconcerting thought barged into my brain.
You are homeless.
Next time: as the initial shock wears off, shelter becomes the main consideration. But where do you go when COVID restrictions are lifting in two years and there's literally no room at the inn?
EPIC: The fire was reported in a bunch of media releases, including CTV, Saltwire and CityNews. The best take-away, by far, from all of these articles is the following quote:
“Crews arrived and found the east end of the building was well-involved in flames,” explained district chief Pat Kline. “They got a fast knockdown on the main bulk of the fire, it did extend into the roof and was a little bit of extra work.
“The first couple of crews did an incredible job stopping it or we could have easily lost the whole building.”
FAIL: The worst thing about apartment living: you can be a model tenant but you have no sweet clue what kind of morons you're sharing a roof with. As George Carlin famously said: “Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that.”
