My husband and I were asleep in bed at 3 a.m. about six years ago when someone started pounding loudly on our door.  It was a fire woman.  She told us to get dressed immediately and leave the building. There was a fire on our floor.

Dressing in silence, I took only my bag. Outside, firemen had dragged their hoses up the stairwell and into an open door down the other end of the hall.  The  firewoman gestured that we should exit the building down the wet stairs. We did so.

When we got downstairs, my husband and I walked really fast around our own block without stopping, for no rational reason.

Then we went to stand across the street with two young women, roommates, from our floor. They were the ones who had heard the smoke alarm in the apartment next to theirs and called the fire department, thank goodness.

Standing on the sidewalk across the street from our building, we saw the firemen throwing things out of the sixth story window onto the sidewalk. Later, they removed their hoses and left.

Nobody ever told us to go back in, but soon we could see that the emergency was over. We mounted the wet stairs and went back inside our apartment.

We took off our shoes and street clothes and crawled back into bed. It was 4:30 a.m. My husband, who needed to be in the office in the morning, was back asleep within 5 minutes.

I couldn’t fall back to sleep.

We later heard that some man, a guest of the legal tenant, had set a mattress on fire with his cigarette, but these are just rumors. The legal tenant moved out a few weeks later, and we never heard anything else about this fire.

The building we live in is brick on the outside and wood inside. It is therefore combustible.  (Buildings like this are also sometimes called fire traps. Fire trap is a negative term.) More modern residential buildings have concrete barriers between the floors and metal fire doors so that fire cannot spread.

Fires are frequent in this city and we hear alarms and sirens at all times of the day and night. I have personally witnessed many fires close by, including numerous fires over the years  in the building where we live.

By city law, each apartment must have a smoke alarm. A smoke alarm is a small device that makes a piercingly loud sound if it detects smoke particles in the air. Many tenants also own a fire extinguisher.

I occasionally see a building gutted by fire. I always wonder where the former tenants went, after they got burnt out. I understand that the Salvation Army, an organization of volunteers, shows up within a few hours after a fire to distribute blankets. I heard they conduct the homeless to the city shelters, notorious for crime and despicable conditions.

After being rendered homeless, many individuals, both women and men, end up curled up in doorways or on the sidewalk, asleep in their blankets during the day.

I once actually saw a pregnant woman sitting cross-legged on the sidewalk begging near the entrance to an electronics store in a commercial area. A passerby said to me, ‘Don’t be worried about her. When she’s about to give birth, an ambulance will take her to a hospital. After she’s in the hospital, a social worker will find housing for her.’

I must say, I never saw homeless people on the streets of this city until around 1975. Before that, rents in the greater metropolitan area, including Manhattan, were affordable by average people. We used to be able to find a new apartment just by looking at the listings in the newspapers.

My first apartment in Manhattan — a studio in a newly renovated building with an elevator — cost me $100 a month. Even around 1980, people  could find apartments under $1,000, when they needed to move. But even studio apartments today rent for $3,300 a month, and most average people don’t have that kind of money.  That’s why people who get burnt out of their homes end up wrapped in blankets,  sleeping on the sidewalk.

Some Questions for Discussion

1. Do you live in an urban area, a small town, the suburbs, or in a rural area? Do you have a professional fire department where you live? Have you ever seen the firemen in action, with their sirens, hoses, and fire trucks?

2. Have you ever seen a fire close to where you live?

3. Have you ever had a fire at home? What happened?

4. Have you ever been rendered homeless by fire? What happened then?

5. Did this story change your mind about wanting to live in a big city?

Photos and Text Copyright © 2008. Revised in 2010.  Barbara A. English. All rights reserved. www.bookachat.com

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Burnt Out by Fire