There was a fire in my apartment building last night.
Thank G-d, nobody was hurt, and the firemen put out the fire before it could spread to any other apartments.
But it made me realize that we didn’t have a proper fire plan in place.
I mean, I knew what I would do in the event of a fire, and I assumed that other people thought the same way.
But when it came to an actual fire, I realize now that everybody thinks differently…
The Story
When the alarm first went off, I was lying in bed falling asleep. At first I thought it was from coming from our apartment, because it was so loud.
I jumped out of bed and ran into the living room, trying to locate the source of the noise. My wife jumped out of her computer chair, and followed me.
I opened the front door of our apartment and I saw a neighbor in the lobby swearing at the “bloody fire alarm”. He took off his shirt and tried to stuff it into the fire alarm to muffle it or suffocate it so it couldn’t smell the smoke (which we couldn’t actually see or smell at this point). I guess we assumed the fire-alarm was malfunctioning.
At this point, I panicked a little, assuming that our Menorah must have set it off. Last night was the 5th night of Chanukah, so we lit 5 candles.
In hindsight I realized that we normally light candles every week for Shabbat (Shabbos), and we’d been lighting Chanukah Candles for 4 nights already, and the alarm doesn’t go off. So our Menorah didn’t set off the alarm.
But that was what my wife and I immediately thought. The candles had been burning for an hour now, and the minimum requirement is 30 minutes, so we quickly blew them out.
Sometime during all this, we heard sirens, and saw lights flashing through the window, and heard someone shout ‘help!’ So we thought something was happening.
I ran down to the floor below, level 1. On that level, the fire alarm was also going off, and the residents were trying to poke it’s ‘off’ switch with a broom to make it shut up.
Later, I wondered why these two groups of people first tried to turn off the alarm, without actually stopping to think, “Is there a fire?”
I continued running downstairs, to the ground level. At ground level, I opened the door, and saw about ten fireman with hoses and smoke. So I ran back upstairs and told the broom-holders on Level 1 that there was a fire downstairs. (their jaws dropped. “Oh!”)
I ran up to my floor, level 2, but the neighbors had returned to their flats, so I banged on their doors and told them there was a fire downstairs.
Another neighbor was running downstairs from level 3 to find out what was going on. I told her, there’s a fire! She said ‘Ok’ and kept running downstairs, leaving her three kids upstairs.
Then I ran into my apartment, told my wife there’s a fire, grab the baby, grab some stuff and let’s get outa here.
See, now, the thing is, when your panicking, you can’t think straight.
And a plan like this has some inherent flaws (grab the baby, grab some stuff, leave).
For example, if you’re carrying the baby, how do you grab stuff? And if your stopping to take things, what do you take?!
So my wife grabbed the baby, realized her hands were full, and handed me the baby. I held the baby in one arm, grabbed my wallet, phone, keys, Tallis and Tefillin (http://www.google.com/search?q=tallit+tefillin ). My baby opened his eyes, staring at me, as if saying, “What’s going on? Can’t you just let me sleep?”.
My wife shouted from the other room “What do I take?”
Then I heard her rummaging through some drawers, “Jewelry! Baby clothes! I need nappies!!!”.
She returned to the living room with an overnight bag full of stuff. With a panicked look on her face, she asked me “Can we take the pram?”
“No, we’re leaving the pram here, we can’t use the lift!” I said.
I started turning off the lights and we headed out the door. I was holding the baby and my Tallis-Tefillin bag. My wife had the overnight bag and some other things.
Anxious to get my family out of the building, we started heading downstairs.
I overheard some people talking about evacuation.
Not processing what I had heard, I continued downstairs.
Suddenly, I realized my neighbor was shouting to me from level 3, “Michoel! Michoel! I asked the fireman, he said we don’t have to evacuate!”
I guess the neighbor didn’t want to wake her sleeping kids, so she’d had the clear-headed plan of actually asking the firemen if we can stay in the building.
Relieved, my wife and I returned to our apartments. My wife put the baby back to bed, and I put my things down and went to find out what the full story was.
The Cause
It seems like a Menorah had started the fire.
The 5th night of Chanukah is one of the holiest nights of Chanukah, and wherever there is huge potential for good, the opposite also exists. If we can’t see the good in something, then it must have come from an extremely high G-dly source, unfathomable to our puny human intellects. Such as Chanukah Day 5.
Our job on this earth is to acknowledge G-d’s existence and realize that everything comes from Him, even seemingly bad events. G-d created us, loves us, and wants us to meet our full potential. We have to learn a lesson from everything that happens to us, the lesson that G-d is trying to teach us.
The Lessons
The lessons I have learnt from this is as follows:
- If the fire alarm is going off, find out if there is a fire before you start swearing at the fire-alarm and trying to turn it off
- My wife and I need to work out a fire-plan. We need to figure out, and agree on exactly what we would try to save in the event of a fire. For example, I should have taken my laptop, because it contains all our family photos from recent years.
- If we would have been more clear-headed, we would have realized that we don’t need to pack clothes and nappies for the baby. We have a bag for him already packed. We call it our nappy bag, and we take it out all the time, whenever we take the baby out. We could have just grabbed this.
- We need to get contents insurance. It’s not expensive, but I’ve been putting it off. I plan to organize that over the next few days.
- Speak to the firemen. Ask them if we need to evacuate before actually evacuating.
I’m going to research more about what is the best course of action to take in the event of a fire.
My point for conveying all this is that I think you, too, should sit down with your family (or room-mates, flat-mates), and make sure you are all clear about what you would save in the event of a fire. Make sure your kids understand the difference between something replaceable (like the TV) and something non-replaceable (your computer’s hard-drive). Make sure you and your wife agree on what is replaceable, valuable, or sentimental. Do you need to save your passport? If you aren’t going overseas for a while, then you can probably replace it. But if you’re heading overseas the next day, then you’ll need it.
You might think you are a very careful person, you always lock all your doors and windows, you never play with matches, etc. You think you don’t need Home & Contents insurance. However an event like this doesn’t have to come from you. G-d has many messengers, and a disaster like this could come from any number of sources.
- Maybe there is faulty wiring in a wall.
- Maybe the suction cap on a shower caddy suddenly decides that it doesn’t want to suck anymore, flooding your apartment (true story, it happened to a friend of mine)
Conclusion
You know, G-d rarely punishes his creations. If you try to be the best person that you can be, then G-d doesn’t punish you. G-d might test you, or challenge you, but he doesn’t punish you. He has infinite patience. But he wants us to learn the lessons that he teaches us, and take them to heart.
I’m getting home & contents insurance, and I’m going to discuss a fire plan with my family.
