Very HOT post

Last Saturday I experienced an emergency situation - my building caught fire. After waking up on Friday at around four thirty, studying, commuting, attending a metting, going to a job interview, I finally got home at 23 PM and fell asleep right away. Next morning I had to wake up very early once again, since I still had classes to prepare and teach in the morning. I was going to spend the whole afternoon in my bed. When I had finished bushing my teeth, I heard people screaming from the buildings next to mine. I rushed to the window and saw smoke and fire some floors below.

I alerted my roommate and urged her to grab her valuables and run away. I did the same, and we kept going downstairs and ringing as many bells as possible. I soon discovered that most of my neighbors are old people, who either wouldn't open the door or were too slow to react. Three floors below, we found out that the smoke was already thick and the only reasonable thing to do was to run for our own lives. Then somebody had a brilliant idea down in the lobby: to cut off the electricity.

That was when I panicked. The halls and the stairways were swarming, and using the elevator is not an option under these circumstances. It was already very difficult to breathe, and suddenly we couldn't see anything. The situation was one of stampede, with too many people wanting to go down, and another bunch wanting to go up. Looking back now, it reminded me of the movie Blindness, based on a book by Saramago, in which people lose their sight and start behaving in unexpected ways. Eventually I managed turn on my cellphone light and go up along the stairway wall. After going past many crying old ladies I finally got to the top of the building.

Things got calmer when I saw lots of fire vehicles and the fire was evidently controlled. That was the way I got to know most of my neighbors, but I wish I had known them in a different way.

Clayton Cardoso, CPE3, evenings