Scenario: it’s a couple of weeks ago. I just get back from fencing practice on Thursday afternoon; I’m eager to take a shower and clean up before getting some productive work done. As I approach the Towers, I notice a fire truck, a number of ambulances and police vehicles, sections of the street cordoned off, and a large amount of people standing outside. Like an idiot, all of this tells me nothing. I park my bike and continue on my way into the my building…whereupon I’m immediately denied entrance.
Sorry, there’s been a fire in Tower 3 and we can’t let anybody in right now.
Well damn. I really want to take a shower. So I call up my friend Stephanie who kindly lends me the use of her shower in the meantime (thank goodness I brought a slight* change of clothes with me to fencing). I get back on my bike (fencing gear and all still with me–oh, and my laptop bag, too, since I had class right before fencing), bid a quick “see you in a bit” to my friends (who are also waiting outside, pissed at the situation), and head over to her apartment. 10 minutes later, I’m squeaky-clean and I head back over to my end of campus. My friends are hanging out in the lobby of the arena, playing Scrabble, so I go and join them (not before checking if we can go back in yet–nope). Now we find out:
It appears a sprinkler heads were damaged when they were activated to combat the fire. So now those need to be replaced or else the entire system won’t function. Which would be terrible if another fire started, since then everything would burn to the ground. So we can’t let you in. For another 3 hours.
*rage face* 3 hours?! To fix a few sprinkler heads!? (In retrospect, seeing as the fire affected three different floors, it was probably a reasonable time estimate.) I had work to get done! …oh well, more Scrabble. Eventually we all decided to go to Knightro’s and waste the night away food and merriment until we’re allowed back in. We finally get back into our apartments by about 8:40pm or so. And that’s when we find out the source of the fire: apparently some idiot decided to cook burgers, but instead of being a smart chef multi-tasked by taking a shower. At the same time. With the stove on and burgers cooking. Burgers, when cooked , in case any of you don’t know, create large amounts of grease. Grease, being oily, has the all-too-easy capacity of being set aflame. Which was just what happened to this guy’s dinner as he was cleaning himself off. Turns out he stepped out of the shower, noticed the SMOKE AND FIRE in his room, thought “oh shit”, and tried to put it out. Burning his arm in the process, incapacitating himself and requiring a trip to the hospital, and causing the sprinklers to turn on. Making the whole of the tower evacuate.
But the fun part’s not over yet. Due to the apparently insane amount of water dumped on the fire to combat its firey-ness, three floors were flooded (the floor of the fire, plus the two below as the water seeped down and through). The wings of these floors that were affected were on my side of the building; furthermore, I’m on the first floor, so mine was affected. I’m glad my room wasn’t, but the two initially down the hall were (all in all, 6 rooms were affected and had to move–the fire room itself, and 5 others across floors 3, 2, and 1 due to water damage). The damage to those rooms didn’t bother me, but the damage to the halls did. As a result of the water soaking everything, big, loud, noisy, industrial-strength dryers had to be installed all throughout my hall, pointing at (of all things) the wall. To dry the wall. Eventually they wisened up and cut holes in the wall, and finally just ripped off the entire drywall to let the blowers dry the apparently damp fiberglass insulation (I say “apparently damp” because A I’m not gonna touch it and B they were drying for two weeks straight). And removed the ceiling tiles. This ocurred on all 3 floors for too many weeks to bear. As it stands, the dryers are finally gone but the tiles are STILL gone, leaving gaping holes in our ceiling.
You’d think that, with all this hubub, we’d finally be done. But no. Like Apple’s media events, there’s one more thing. The next day (Friday), I have only one class. At 12:30pm. So I get to sleep in. Oh wait, no I didn’t. I was woken up by–guess what? A fire alarm. Again. The next morning. Walking out in pajamas and joining the rest of the building again outside was oh-so-fun. Met up with my friends and headed over to the arena again. Thankfully, this time it was just something wrong with the system (oh really? That wasn’t expected?! They should’ve disabled the faulty system until testing at a more convenient time.) and we were back in within 20 minutes.
Thus ends my tale. With the exception of those damn ceiling tiles.
