I live in typical post WWI building in the Bronx and one night a couple years ago we had a near major catastrophe. Just as our favorite Wednesday evening TV program ended the lights flashed off and on several times and then in an instant we were in total darkness and our apartment quickly filled with thick nasty smelling smoke. I thought for sure that the building had caught on fire. But as it turned out the smoke had come from shorted out electrical wires in the power plant adjacent to our building. Though at the time we had no idea what was going on and everyone quickly evacuated the building.
The electrical fire had been quickly extinguished though some of the apartments still contained serious fumes and heavy black smoke hung in the air. The fire deputy would not let us reenter our apartments until the carbon monoxide level had receded. We stood around outside for hours eagerly watching as a fireman walked through the building several times with a special meter testing the air, and only when he gave us the O.K. we were allowed back into our apartments even though we’d be without electricity or heat.
It was early spring and the night was quite chilly but that night we slept with every window open. Several hours later I awoke from an uneasy sleep when the lights that had flickered on and off before the fire all came on at once when the electricity had been reestablished in our building. I got up, turned off the lights and went back to bed knowing that things had gotten back to some semblance of normal.
Ah, the cat!! And what of them you ask? They were obviously totally freaked out by the mayhem. There were lots of sirens and major lights flashing all through our darkened apartment from the dozen fire trucks that had responded to the emergency, and you can bet that the cats had quickly scurried off to hiding places. There would have been no way that we could have rescued them had there been a real fire. And that's a sad thing to think about. Honey, the most easily freaked out of our two cats was still slinking around the next morning and jumped at ever little sound. Jersey, the older and possibly the wiser of the two felines, eventually came out from hiding once we’d come back into the apartment that night. She sat on her haunches at the window and nervously watched the Con Edison guys hook up the new power lines for the apartment building. My son said he heard Jersey cough several times during the night but she seemed to be fine in the morning.
The Con Edison emergency vehicle was still parked across the street the next morning and it’s motor rumbled and rumbled, making poor little Honey flit nervously around the apartment looking for a hiding place every time she heard a loud kaboom. But she must have found some solace in the night because I spotted a dead water bug on the floor in the hallway, a sure sign that she’d been out hunting in the darkened hours while we slept. Good for her. As skittish as she is, she’s still a real trooper.
Nervous cats however were not my only worries. As I surveyed our apartment that next day I could see that a thin layer of soot had settled on everything. My four-day-old computer keyboard that had only the day before been pristine white, now looked as though it had been with me for months. The stack of newly cleaned laundry that I hadn't put away yet now had a thin layer of schmutz on it, too. The top page of paper sitting in my printer had a grey tinge and when I dragged my finger across the top sheet I left a classic white streak on the sooty mess. This was a pretty good indication that everything, and I do mean everything, would have to be cleaned.
But when I looked at the damage in our apartment I knew that it could have been much worse. And I had a strong urge to thank strangers. The response time from the FDNY amazed me, and I knew that they must have received many calls from other tenants, because my husband, my son, and myself had not completely descended the stairs to the outside of our building when we heard the sirens heading our way. Then during the long hours of waiting, I heard several firemen offer their coats to mothers and children shivering in the chilly night. The men from the apartment complex service department had worked non-stop since the first notification of trouble and I heard them outside my apartment window the next morning still digging up the smoldering earth, working tirelessly to correct the problem. And neighbors who had only nodded when passing each other in the courtyard, that night offered to let people stay in their apartments, or to bring them a cup of tea to fortify them through the chilly hours while they waiting.
We were lucky our story had a happy ending. I remember not too long ago that someone had told me that the best way to thank strangers was to lend a helping hand to the next person standing in line. I’d say that’s a pretty good way to go through life.
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