Looks like I moved out just in time
Nearly two months after moving to Takoma Park, a fire ripped through the 7th floor of my old building in Adams Morgan early Sunday morning. The fire started in my former neighbor’s unit after she left a candle lit when she went to bed. It spread into my now-abandoned unit, engulfing the hallway along the way and leaving it charred and covered in soot.Firefighters kicked down my door and busted out my windows to air out the smoke. They were able to contain the fire and put out the flames in 10 minutes, according to news sources. No one was injured except for the neighbor’s cat, who died, and a firefighter, who burned his hand.
The Princess and I drove down to DC last night to check on my friend DJ Roo, who lives in the unit below the one where the fire originated, and to see the extent of the fire damage.
We had to walk up seven flights since the elevator was out. The higher we climbed, the stronger the “camp-fire” smell got. We first met up with DJ Roo and saw the damage in his apartment, mostly caused by water. We then went to my old floor.
The scene looked like a haunted house. Blackened walls streaking to the ceiling. An ominous darkness caused by the electrical outage. A lone fire extinguisher hanging untouched, ironically, in its place.
We walked into my old apartment and found the walls dripping black. All the windows had been busted out by the firefighters to air out the hallway and my bathroom was entirely blanketed with dark filth. I’ve never kept my living spaces particularly clean so we joked that, really, it didn’t look much different. But all I kept thinking about was what it would have been like if I was still living there – WITHOUT renter’s insurance. Sunday morning around 2am? I might have been at Bedrock Billiards with my friends, waiting for last call. Or at The Princess’, spending a long weekend together. Or, just maybe, at home, staying up late to watch my latest Netflix DVDs or even sleeping.
“See?” The Princess told me. “It’s a good thing we moved in together. It was fate.” I’ve never been a believer in fate and destiny. I believe that things just happen and sometimes they make for some interesting coincidences for people to over-analyze. In any case, I was relieved I didn’t live there anymore and felt sorry for my neighbor who, from what I heard, didn’t even have insurance.Tomorrow, I thought on the drive home, I’m calling Geico.
This entry was posted
on Tuesday, October 10, 2006 at 1:17 PM.
