Woken Up to the Smoke Detector
I woke up this morning, having no intention of going to my morning classes (being sick combined with a big math test this afternoon left me feeling that skipping them is the smarter choice). Here I was in bed just before about 8:30 this morning, and I could hear this annoying, high-pitched beeping noise. I knew it was a smoke detector, but I wasn’t sure from where it was coming. I got out of bed and asked Allison, who was in the process of slipping shoes on to go take a look outside. It turns out that it was from upstairs, and our landlord had left his panier bag on top of his stove with the element turned on. She came and told me this, as I scrambled for our fire extinguisher, thinking we would have to break in. As she ran back up the stairs, she realised his door was unlocked and was able to let herself in. She took the bag off (which was thankfully only smoking at this point — not quite yet on fire) and opened the back door in order to let the nasty melted plastic infested air out.
Less than 10 minutes later, our landlord arrived home. He had just popped up to the store to buy something, and returned to find smoke coming out of the house and his front door wide open. I was standing outside, and explained to him what had happened, and he rushed inside to take a look. After a while, he came down and thanked us for being home and paying attention. I guess we were all pretty lucky.
Lesson on the day: don’t put stuff that doesn’t belong on a stove on top of your stove. Ever.
