Death Engineer
11-29-2009, 07:01 AM
12:10a: Fire Alarm goes off at your hotel 300 mi from home.
What do you do? I grab my pants and shirt, wake my wife, throw my shoes on and peek out the door to make sure this is real. People streaming into the stairwell. Wake up 5 yr old son and 3 yr old daughter and proceed to carry the daughter down from the 3rd floor to our van while my wife is wrapping up our 1 yr old. As she opens the door to follow, our 5 yr old pulls back seeing all the people (also, he had cough medicine about 1.5 hours before).
The door shuts and the keys don't work. So now my wife and a nice man next door is yelling to him to open the door from the inside as he begins to cry. He finally opens the door as I get back up to the third floor fighting traffic in my sockless getup. We make it safely to our van and pull away from the building.
Still no visible smoke, but 2 fire trucks have already arrived and 3 more emergency vehicles pull up including a fire marshall. After about 3-5 minutes of sitting in the car, they gave the all clear and allowed people to file back in slowly (to prevent chaos).
Everyone is back in bed asleep (other than me) and all is well. But there's really nothing quite like the adrenaline you get when you hear those sirens blaring. It didn't matter that my legs were jello from running 3.4 mi the previous 2 mornings (having not gotten much exercise for over 6 weeks). I didn't feel a thing until we were all safe in our van. Then things settled down and I felt like I had run another round.
Our kids were so out of it, but we sat on the bed and talked about it before they went to sleep. About how important it was to stay with us during those times even when things look scary. Thanking them for being so brave and reassuring them that it was ok now.
Now, I'm just waiting for it to happen again...
I'm thankful that we're all safe. And for nights without fire alarms!
What do you do? I grab my pants and shirt, wake my wife, throw my shoes on and peek out the door to make sure this is real. People streaming into the stairwell. Wake up 5 yr old son and 3 yr old daughter and proceed to carry the daughter down from the 3rd floor to our van while my wife is wrapping up our 1 yr old. As she opens the door to follow, our 5 yr old pulls back seeing all the people (also, he had cough medicine about 1.5 hours before).
The door shuts and the keys don't work. So now my wife and a nice man next door is yelling to him to open the door from the inside as he begins to cry. He finally opens the door as I get back up to the third floor fighting traffic in my sockless getup. We make it safely to our van and pull away from the building.
Still no visible smoke, but 2 fire trucks have already arrived and 3 more emergency vehicles pull up including a fire marshall. After about 3-5 minutes of sitting in the car, they gave the all clear and allowed people to file back in slowly (to prevent chaos).
Everyone is back in bed asleep (other than me) and all is well. But there's really nothing quite like the adrenaline you get when you hear those sirens blaring. It didn't matter that my legs were jello from running 3.4 mi the previous 2 mornings (having not gotten much exercise for over 6 weeks). I didn't feel a thing until we were all safe in our van. Then things settled down and I felt like I had run another round.
Our kids were so out of it, but we sat on the bed and talked about it before they went to sleep. About how important it was to stay with us during those times even when things look scary. Thanking them for being so brave and reassuring them that it was ok now.
Now, I'm just waiting for it to happen again...
I'm thankful that we're all safe. And for nights without fire alarms!