FIRE!

I confess being a bit irritated by the foul smell of trash burning (an all too frequent occurrence.) as I stepped out of my apartment building to make a trip to the market, To my surprise, as I rounded the corner of my building, I discovered that it wasn't trash burning but rather a first floor apartment in the building across the street.

I noticed someone breaking the windows (presumably a fireman) and throwing what appeared to be buckets of water out the window. Though a fire truck was on the scene, I didn't see any fire hoses! Walking around to the entrance side of the building, I found a small group of on-lookers. Smoke billowed out of the entrance to that section of the building, and up the stairwell to the top (5th floor) – engulfing an adjacent 5th floor apartment where I saw two young ladies leaning out their balcony window in an effort to escape the smoke engulfing them. I had to go on to the market – but I began thinking and wondering – whey were these young ladies still in that smoke-filled apartment,? For that matter how does one escape in case of fire? The only options are to exit through the stairwell to the street, or jump from a window – no fire escape. I later looked at the building in which I live to find an outside ladder/escape of some kind. At the end of our building is a ladder which extends from the roof of the building down to about the second floor level at which point it's cut off – so I suppose one is to jump from there.

Sometime later returning from the market, the fire was out – but it was evident that the apartment was gutted. Sadly, the story according to one of my neighbors was that the resident of the apartment was a drunk and burned to death.

Safety doesn't seem to be much of a priority.