THE DAY ALARM WENT OFF AT MY APARTMENT

I have been in couple of serious accidents and got HEFAT (Hostile Environment and First Aid Training) so I always consider myself as a brave person, kind of like a hero of an action flick, but life is stranger than action flicks it always catches you off guard.

Tonight few minutes after 11 pm the fire alarm went off in my apartment building. First me and my roommate thought it was her laptop because there was a blinking logo of virus alert. There was no way we could see it coming. We experienced the ‘panic mode.’ It took us few second to realise that the sound of alarm was too loud and it was impossible for a laptop speaker to cause it and right then we shout in chorus ‘IT’S THE FIRE ALARM!’

I ran into my room and picked up my stuff. (Here is a tip.) When I travel I always keep a short list of things in my mind – things that matter – in case I need to run for life I would grab those things in 5 seconds and just runaway. So in 15 seconds I had my mother’s picture, my passport, wallet, camera and notebook  and I was running down the stairs.

Once I was out on the street I realised everybody had their cellphones and keys in their hands and I was one of the few people who had so many belonging in their hands.

My roommate forgot her passport in the room. We are glad there was no fire else she might have had lost it.

Police arrived within 5 minutes. It took around 20 minutes to turn off turn off the alarm.

We don’t know the what caused the alarm but we will, hopefully, find out tomorrow.

We – the tenants – thought we were safe and it was just a practical joke. Little did we know that there was another surprise waiting for us.

Here is another tip when there is fire even after alarm turns off and everything becomes normal use the stairs and don’t use the elevator.

You don’t want to be stuck in the elevator right after the fire alarm turns off. Me and my roommate got off on the 6th floor because elevator didn’t stop at 4th and then climbed down the stairs.

One of my colleagues shared something that requires some investigation, “Was there really #fireatrooseveltpoint though? I heard a girl say “Sorry, I pulled the alarm. Things were just getting too crazy in there.” Don’t know if she was kidding.”

Tonight was one of the rare occasion when I felt my heart racing so fast and felt the instant response of my survival instincts, you don’t feel so alive normally.

In that moment I knew that my mother was safe 8000 miles away and I could make more pictures of her but I couldn’t fight the instinct to rip her picture off the wall and take it with me.

It was a kind of situation where I was happy that my mother wasn’t around.

My Humphrey friend had to wake up her 8 year old son. He is the happiest kid I have ever met but tonight he was sleepy, scared and confused.

The moment we went outside I looked for my Humphrey friends (we met just three weeks ago) it took me a few seconds to spot one of them, I hugged one of her and I thought to myself ‘I care about them more than I realise.’