Fire

 So I’m here at home enjoying my day, writing a hub and talking to my mom and all the sudden the fire alarm goes off. I didn’t panic because I didn’t realize it was the fire alarm at first. I thought at first it was a bell letting children out of school across the street. Then I realized there was no school around and that it was indeed the fire alarm. So I left. Hmmm, I didn’t think to grab anything, I didn’t even grab my keys. The point of this story is not so much about the fire alarm but about the fact that nobody seemed to care.

On the way down the stairs I noticed I was the first person to leave the apartments on this floor. I was the only one in the stair case and the third person that got outside. I didn’t panic and I wasn’t in a hurry but I was shocked to be the third person outside. So I stood there for a few minutes then moved away from the building. As I watched other people come outside I realized they really didn’t care. Nobody spoke about what was going on, they all just stood there like they were waiting in line at the grocery store. I watched one man, through the glass window, stop to tie his shoe in the stairwell and I thought is tieing your shoe really more important than getting out of a building that could possibly be burning down around you?

Now, mind you, there was no smoke on the third floor, my floor, and there was no smoke billowing out the windows that I could see but you wouldn’t know that coming out of the building. Three fire trucks show up and they saunter in and come back and then leave. They don’t say all is clear, they just left. Is this really the way it is in the city? Nobody cares about what is going on around them? It seemed so surreal to me like we weren’t waiting around for anything. We definitely weren’t worried about our apartments or our belongings. Nobody even asked if everyone was okay.