The Fire Next Door
After a fairly uneventful week of unpacking my things in the new apartment, the building caught on fire this morning.

It happened about noon, just as I was making lunch and getting ready to head to work at the BAC library. I heard the fire engines first and thought, “My, they’re close’, and when I looked out the window three were parked on the corner. I then opened my door, and smelled the smoke.

The building I live in is a big, four story brick affair with three entrances: There’s the main one that faces Brighton Avenue, and two that face smaller side streets. The building is broken up that way into three addresses: 59 Brighton Ave, with a Fordam street address on one side and my Chester street address on the other. We have separate mailboxes and staircases. This was not comforting though, when I saw flames shooting out the windows of a 59 Brighton street apartment. The windows were just below and to the left of mine.

After I smelled the smoke I made a quick call to work and let them know I was going to be late. As soon as I hung up the fireman knocked on my door, so I shoved Puck in his carrier and grabbed my wallet off the counter and we got out with everyone else.

By the time we were on the sidewalk across the street, the firemen were breaking in the windows of the burning apartment and hosing it down. Next to me stood my downstairs neighbor, horribly worried because the apartment on fire was next to his. We watched the firemen step through the broken windows and begin to throw smoldering furniture out onto the sidewalk. No one knew what caused the fire. All I could think of was that I didn’t have renter’s insurance. Puck, in his carrier, was freaking out over the noise and smoke and sudden confinement to his carrier.

A Boston Herald reporter came over and asked for a picture of my cat and me with the damage in the background.

The building superintendent came over to talk to us. He said that those of us with entrances on Chester and Fordam Street shouldn’t worry, because there were firewalls built into our building to keep the whole thing from going down. So even though there might be damage in the apartments that sat right next to ours, things should be OK. This made me feel better, especially when I saw the firemen in the unit right next to mine.

But it was the apartment below that one that got totally gutted; surely though the units above and below hers were damaged. The girl who lived where the fire happened came running down the street from the restaurant where she worked just in time to see the firemen climbing out her windows.

When Mr. Puck and I were let back in the apartment, the first thing I did was go around touching all the walls that I thought we shared with our neighbors. The walls weren’t even hot; and thankfully they weren’t soggy, either. Firewalls had protected our stuff. Before, I thought a firewall was just something on a computer that kept hackers out.

I was late for work because of waiting out on the sidewalk for an hour, but when I called my boss and told her what happened she gave me the day off. I spent my time calling insurance agents, getting quotes over the phone for renter’s insurance. It’s another bill I’ll have to pay, but after today I’m convinced it’s a necessary one.