Wrecked day...

At 3:40 am the fire alarm went off in my building and would not stop. I got up, pulled on a pair of pants and shoes, grabbed my phone and went downstairs, thinking it would be a short-lived situation like had happened so many times at the building I used to live in. I'm up on the 9th floor, so took the stairs down...and by the 6th floor there was smoke, and it got thicker. And nastier.

Fortunately, I'm still in the habit of wearing a blue face mask, due to Covid, so that mitigated a lot of the smoke...and the mask wound up more of a dirty grey by the time I got out of the building. Fire trucks were roaring up. News Crews. With lots of old people milling about in their nightclothes. It was very Fellini-esque.

Initially, we were told we'd be back in our apartments in an hour or two, because the fire was put out, quickly. Some dipshit had set the dumpsters beside the ventilation system ablaze, and that was easily handled. Only now everything had to be checked to make sure it was okay and not affected by the acrid smoke. So we were bussed to a community center, where the AC was set to freezing, and given a light breakfast then sandwiches for lunch.

Since all I took was my phone, I got a jacket from my car and a charger cord for it then got on the bus. They didn't want anyone to drive over. But there was no place to charge my phone at the center, so I finally walked back to the building and got my car and used that to charge it up. Then after lunch, when we still didn't have word about when we could get back into our units, I figured I was going to be spending the night in a hotel so popped over to Target to get some clothes and such for tomorrow and went to the office to do a full charge on my phone. But then I got the all clear. Took more than 12 hours to handle.

What all this leads to is, no writing done. I didn't bring my laptop or backpack so had nothing to work with, and the chatter was so loud at the community center, I couldn't concentrate. So tomorrow is the return to normal. I hope. And from now on my backpack will rest near the door with things in it, for emergencies.