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When the fire alarm went off in my apartment building about an hour ago, I figured it was a prank. In all my years in this world, I've experienced plenty of fire alarms, but no actual fires. In fact, during the day on Tuesday, there was a fire drill at the office building. So it was only natural that when the alarm went off at two in the morning, as I was ready to go to bed, my immediate impulse was to think that it was the work of some drunk dude and ignore it.

But then, just to be safe, I threw on some clothes and popped my head in the hallway. Sure enough, I did smell something burning, and decided to make my way down the stairs. The putrid smell became more pungent as the floors got lower.

As I emerged to the street, I ran into a guy who told me that his kicthen was on fire. I looked up to the second floor. Smoldering black smoke blew through the window and amber flickered in the background. Apparently, the culprit was a tray of cinnamon buns that turned explosive in the oven.

The DCFD soon arrived in real fire engines, and did their thing with ladders
and hoses and other stuff. We had to wait outside for roughly 40 minutes as they made sure the fire was out and investigated. Nobody was hurt.

I'm back in my apartment, blogging while I wait for the last of the noisy fire trucks to drive away. So I guess the moral of the story is that if you hear a fire alarm go off in your building, it may actually be because there is a fire.