Yesterday as we were walking out the door heading for church, we smelled something awful! As we kept walking down the three flights of stairs to the carport, we heard that obnoxious, repetitive beeping we all know... a fire alarm. And it was coming from apartment #6.
Apartment #6 just got a new tenant last week. It's a single guy. We met him once, I think his name was Mitch? Anyway, we looked over in the carport to see that his car was still there. Dan and I debated for a few seconds about the fact that he was probably inside, and we'd embarrass him if we knocked on the door to make sure everything was okay... blah blah. Then, guy from Apartment #4 opens his door and asks "Is that a fire alarm going off?" We explained the situation about his car being here, but Apartment #4 decides to take a peek through the window, and it's a good thing he did! Apartment #6 was FULL of smoke!
So the three of us check all the windows and doors. LOCKED. Apartment #4 guy calls our landlord immediately and our landlord says he'll be right over. Thankfully, we had some of our favorite friends lived in this apartment last year, Justin and Marie Rogers. We had the occasional game night and had been in that apartment a few times. It just so happened that Justin told us once how easy it was to break in their apartment. He'd been locked out a few times and all he had to do was pop the screen out, push against the window, and it would unlock and slide right open. The window is close enough to the front door that he could reach the door handle from the window.
I had completely forgotten this story. But Dan totally remembered and instantly started taking the screen out while Apartment #4 was on the phone and I was panicking. Within a few seconds, the screen was out, window opened, and door opened. A thick smoke start billowing out the front door.
Apartment #4 guy called in, "Anybody home?!"
No answer.
It was like a movie, you couldn't see a thing through the smoke unless you got close to the ground. We all started hacking our lungs out. Too bad I was in a pencil skirt because it would have been an excellent opportunity to practice my army crawl. Apartment #4 guy booked it into the kitchen, Dan and I took off to the back of the apartment to open the bedroom windows.
It's amazing how fast your mind works in these sort of situations. Because these are not big apartments, and I had a million thoughts going through my mind in under 3 seconds. The one that freaked me out the most was, "I think I'm about to see a dead body!" Apartment #6 guy had his car here, which meant there was a big possibility he was passed out somewhere in this apartment for who knows how long!
I ran into the empty bedroom, trying to avoid the dead body possibility and threw open the window. Dan went into possibly dead Apartment #6 guys room and threw open the window. As the smoke cleared, I was so relieved to find there was no body to be found!
We ran back out of the apartment to get fresh air.
I asked Apartment #4 guy, "What's causing the smoke?"
He stared back at me with huge eyes with that look of "Oh crap!"
I booked it back into the kitchen to find the source... a pot on the stove with a Sam's Club size plastic container of honey sitting in it. The burner was turned on high. I grabbed the pot and ran back outside. The smell of burning honey/plastic is AWFUL!!!! We poured water on it to stop the thing from burning and smoking any more. The fire alarm would not stop going off. So I ran back in one more time to fan away the remaining smoke. That awful noise finally stopped.
There wasn't much more to do at that point. We needed to be on our way to church, so apartment #4 guy said he'd wait for the landlord and we left. Well once we were half way to church, we realized how awful we smelled, my hair wreaked of smoke! (But that's the price heroes have to pay... HAHA)
We have quite a few good stories from living in our apartment building, but this one deserved a blog post! I guess the moral of the story is to always tell people about how easy it is to break into your apartment? Or to make sure you go to church on Sundays so you can stop your building from burning down? Or maybe I need to quite my day job and be a firefighter? Or maybe just don't melt your honey using a stove...
