//nedward.org

It took longer than expected to post pic­tures of the fire. Here are the details:

We had a little fire in our build­ing on Friday afternoon.

Friday, around noon, my girl­friend Pres­ley was at home… and she heard a bump — which she thought sounded like a neigh­bor drop­ping some­thing. Shortly there­after, the build­ing fire alarm went off and she approached the door. There was some smoke coming in.

So, she opened the door, and saw that the hall­way was filled with black smoke. She couldn’t tell where the fire was coming from, so she closed the door and called 911. They told her to stay put, and put a wet towel under the door.

She grabbed our cat Katya and put her in her crate, and opened the windows… wait­ing for the fire­men. Finally, 20 min­utes later, 4 guys came crash­ing through our door with axes and O2 masks, and checked to make sure she was okay. Of course she was, she just wanted to get the heck out of there.

So, they decided it was too dan­ger­ous to go out through the hall­way, so they started axing the heck out of our front win­dows, rip­ping the frames right out of the wall. They helped Pres­ley onto one of those lad­ders, and helped her walk down to safety. One of them car­ried the cat down too, who was remark­ably calm for a change.

Once she was on the ground, she called me, and I left work.

As far as we know, the cause of the fire was this:

The apart­ment next door to us was vacant for about a month — so they must’ve had trou­ble fill­ing it — so they decided to refin­ish the hard­wood floors. When con­trac­tors were sand­ing the polyurethane, they appar­ently didn’t turn off the gas. I’m not sure what the con­nec­tion was that started the fire, but the “bump” that Pres­ley felt was some kind of explo­sion. It could also be related to the polyurethane fumes and a lack of proper ventilation.

They had the entire block roped off, and as far as I know no people or pets were injured (includ­ing Pres­ley and Katya). The fire­men were really great, as were the Red Cross, EMTs and the city of Cam­bridge. With the excep­tion of glass, no win­dows, and smoke, we have no fire or water damage.

We stayed in a Bed & Break­fast for the week­end, and we are now stay­ing with friends — so we are set­tled and comfortable.

Time to look for a new apartment…