Smoke smells scratchy

So when I walk into the hallway, it smells like old smoke. It makes my throat scratchy to breathe it. This is when it is really annoying that I am so far from the elevator.

Did I mention that the smoke is because there was a fire last night?

No, not in my apartment. Not even on my floor. But definitely in my building.

I live on the sixth floor. The apartment directly below us, on the fifth floor, has a balcony. that balcony is the roof of the fourth floor - because part of the building doesn't go past the fourth floor. Well, anyway, we can see that roof from our window.

mysticengineer was visiting briefly when I smelled something burning and asked what it was, wondering if something had melted in the kitchen, or if a bug had gotten caught in a lamp - or something. But then we looked outside, and there was smoke coming from somewhere - a bit. And then a lot. And there were sirens. And then we began to realize it was our building.

We tried calling the doorman, but no answer. Then someone in the hall said there was a fire on the fourth floor. After stopping to close the windows and grab my computer (just in case. It's expensive and has lots of files on it.), I learned that I can descend six flights of stairs really quickly.

The fact that the stairwell closest to me was hazy with smoke - and then, after we went back to get my apartment mate and passed it again, opaque with smoke, may have motivated our hasty movement down the far stairwell. There were wisps of smoke coming into the stairwell around the edges of the door on the fourth floor.

Yeah. So I slept over at mysticengineer's place last night. We were allowed back in, but the smoke smell was still there, and hitting me in the sinuses. Plus, I had seen the burnt out apartment from the outside, and that, plus the smell? A bit disturbing.

It hit a bit close to home - on more than one level. Because it was right there, two floors down and around a bend in the corridor. So it was good to sleep somewhere else.

Now, I am back. It still smelled bad when I ate breakfast. Now, the smell is almost completely gone from the apartment, but not the hallway. As I said, it smells scratchy. It is rather irritating to my throat. They say they are going to take care of it tomorrow.

Meanwhile, rumors fly all over the place. What happened, to whom and why. I learned no one was seriously hurt, and that a couple lives in that apartment, and has for a while, and that their son is now grown up and was home when it happened. I learned that people could see flames shooting out of the windows, that one person heard glass break, and that the apartment next door on one side was wrecked as well, because the firefighters broke into it to get to the fire. I learned that the fourth floor hallway is a mess, and that the third floor has tons of water damage in the hall and also elsewhere - and that water leaked down as far as the second floor - if not further. Last night, they were mopping up water in the lobby that had leaked down the stairwell, from where they connected the hose. I also learned that the smoke got into the hallways higher up. Our hallway may have had some smoke, but there was so much on the 15th floor that people were trapped in their apartments. One guy was going to tie sheets together and drop down to the 10th floor balcony until a neighbor called him to tell him what was going on and not to worry. But all of us in the building learned that there is no good way to figure out what is going on in this building when there is a fire. I learned that this was not the first big fire, and that there was once a fire on my floor, in the apartment across the hall from me, and that it was so bad that a tenant all the way down on the other end of the hall had her furniture turned black by the smoke (or that's what she said, anyway.)

It is actually a bit disturbing that there is no way, it seems, for us to know when and where there is a fire except by smelling smoke, looking out the window, or hearing from our neighbors. We called downstairs, but the doorman did not pick up - which is understandable, but it meant we had no clue what we were supposed to do - well, I guess for us it was easy to just get out and ask questions later, but the people higher up whose hallways were filled with smoke and who had no clue where it was coming from and no way to find out? We found out where the fire was from our neighbors across the hall, who shouted out that there was a fire on the fourth floor. But if our hallway had been filled with smoke, even our neighbors could not have told us anything - because they would have been stuck in their apartments too. There isn't even any sort of alarm, it seems.

But the management did take the time to write up a letter to us all, thanking us for whatever it was we all did last night in how we handled the situation, and also assuring us that everything is according to code. Thanks. Glad to hear clear answers on why no one told us what was going on.

Anyway, so that's what happened.

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