Ramblings About My Life..

Fire!

My sleep was abruptly cut short last Thursday night - Friday morning, to be perfectly accurate. I had just tumbled into my bed at 12am, and surrendered to the blissfulness of wandering in Dreamland when I was woken up three and a half hours later by the ear-splitting cacophony of the fire alarms ringing. At first, I thought I had accidentally set my handphone's alarm to ring at the wrong time - so, my first instinct when I blearily slid out from beneath my warm and toasty duvet was to find my handphone and to smash it into a billion tiny pieces of what used to be a communication device. To perfectly convey how conscious I am after just waking up from deep sleep, I actually walked all the way to my desk, pressed a few buttons on my phone, walked back to my bed and lay down.

It was after I pulled my duvet over myself that I suddenly realized that the alarm was still ringing. And it wasn't my phone's alarm - it was the fire alarm! My mind went from groggy-just-woke-up mode to fully-awake mode in an instant. I then literally leapt out of bed, grabbed my handphone, keys, wallet and watch and pulled a jacket over myself. At that point, I heard Wei Jin knock on my door. I shouted "Yeah, I'm coming!" and charged out of my room. We then proceeded to wake Yi Yong, my next-door neighbour, by banging on his door. After he finally emerged from his room, we went off to our fire assembly point. Once outside the main building, we met Hiromi and Li Ching. The first thing Hiromi did was to comment on my sleep-tousled hair. Hahaha! Well, it's not like I have any say in how I look after I wake up!

Everyone then proceeded to the assemby point, where we stood in the frigid morning wondering what on Earth was going on. There was plenty of speculation as to what actually triggered the fire alarm - some said that it was probably a drunk student who accidentally triggered the alarms by opening the fire escape doors whereas others thought that a student (by the most bizzare circumstances) set his carpet on fire after smoking in his room. However, the general consensus was that the whole thing was probably a false alarm. Things began to look a bit serious when the Residential Tutors announced that if we tried to sneak back in via the front path, we would be fined - firemen from two fire engines had cordoned off the front part. Whispers that there really was a fire began to circulate.

Our uncertainty was put to rest when one of the Residential Tutors announced to us that there was indeed a fire, it happened in B Bay of the Tower Block and that there was nothing to worry about since the firemen had already handled it and they were just "cleaning up". We continued standing out there for quite some time after this announcement, and the cold Sheffield night began to take it's toll on some of us. Li Ching was starting to feel the cold and Wei Jin kindly gave his thick robes to her since his pyjamas were quite thick. I got to get pyjamas like that! Haha! Even though I was more prepared for the cold this time, I still felt it nevertheless. My upper body was kept warm and toasty by the thick jacket I threw on, but my toes were absolutely freezing since I forgot to put my shoes on!

Lurid details pertaining as to how exactly the fire actually began started to surface. There was talk of exploding ovens, drunk students, faulty wiring and even arson. I was rather interested to find out what exactly happened, but when we were finally allowed into the building again, the calls of my bed beckoned more strongly than my curiousity. I continued my interrupted sleep after reaching my room - but I was too tired to go for the sole morning lecture approximately five hours later. Being awoken in the middle of the night , standing outside in the freezing night and talking excitedly about everything and yet nothing is rather tiring stuff. Perfect excuse to skive a lecture. Hahaha! At least I went for the all the other lectures, right?

There were plenty of interesting stories to hear from my corridor neighbours as well as residents of B Bay of the Tower Block. One of my neighbours said that when he tried to awaken his neighbour after hearing the fire alarms blaring, his neighbour just opened the door, waved at him and went back into his room! The next day, his neighbour couldn't remember doing anything of the sort! To think that he slept through the whole thing without an inkling of what had happened! Another of my friends, who stayed just a few rooms away from the kitchen that caught fire, told me a truly amazing story. Apparently he didn't wake up immediately after the alarms rang, and by the time he got out of his room, he was greeted by smoke so thick that the entire corridor was shrouded in smoke. He was on the verge of panic when he saw a figure walk out of the smoke - it was the porter. The porter shouted "Get out!" and waved him towards the stairs, and he reckoned that the porter saved his life.

The funny thing about the fire was that there were no signs of how it actually started! When my friend visited the kitchen that was the source of all the panic the next day, he said that everything looked fine - although there was a nasty smell in the air. To disprove the theory of exploding ovens, the microwave oven in the room was perfectly okay. How then, did the fire actually begin? Pretty scary and exciting food for thought. Anyway, I just hope a fire won't break out in Halifax Hall again - goodness knows I could do with fewer disruptions to my sleep!

posted by yong chen @ 12:47 AM