I have one by the front door and a fire blanket in the kitchen.
In
about 1984 I woke up with what at first was bleary eyes, then smell
of smoke. I went to the top of stairs thinking it was burning toast,
looked down into blackness and re hot smoke rushed up towards me. I
rushed into back bedroom which was empty as my housemates had already
gone to work. Smashed the window, grabbed a sheet from the bed and
shouted fire as loud as I could, climbing out onto the lower kitchen
roof. Quickly a nearby builder turned up with a ladder which I
descended, cutting the soles of my feet with glass from the smashed
window, also having cut my side on the glass as I exited. Still
thinking it was just a small fire and still somewhat bleary, I
smashed the glass in the kitchen door, knowing the key was on a hook
just inside. I reached in, cutting my arm, grabbed the key which was
so hot that I dropped it.
The fire brigade turned up in
about ten minutes.
Next door was occupied by a group of
Muslims - they invited me inside. They told me they had been upstairs
chanting and seen what they first thought was some sort of
manifestation before smelling smoke.
The "house
mother", who had been standing at the kitchen sink, said she had
heard the noise and looked outside and up and had seen a "naked
blackened hippy climbing out of the bedroom window and averted my
eyes."
After the fire had been put out and the
contents of the back room emptied outside, I went inside the house,
to see the landlord, a fireman and a policeman standing talking and
(unbelievably) smoking cigarettes.
They told me the fire
had started in the back room through faulty wiring of the stereo
although I thought it may have been started by the coal fire. It was
just burning through the door to the front downstairs
room.
Everything was blackened, including me. The copper
took me first to my doctor then to the hospital where they let be
bathe and treated my cuts.
The landlord had another house
just up the road where we moved into.
It was one of the
luckiest days of my life, which taught me well to appreciate my life.
