Hotel on Fire? What Elevator?

I didn’t think Floyd had a flash camera, but it seemed like he was sitting across the hotel room making flash pictures.

As I often ask this unpredictable man, I said, “What are you doing?”

As he began to say, “It’s the fire alarm,” the automatic announcement began:
“Attention! Attention! A fire is occurring in the building. Leave the building immediately. Attention! Attention! A fire is occurring in the building. Leave the building immediately.” This came with ear-piercing alarm about six feet from my ears.

Red alert! Heart pounding…glad I’m not in my jammies…what next? Have to leave. What to take? Oh dear!

So, best instincts working overtime, I grabbed my phone and my wedding ring. Great choices. Not my shoes that make things not hurt; not my computer; not my…well, I did pick up my purse finally. But apparently, my very first concern was that phone. It does have a lot of good pictures on it…does Verizon back up those too? So, my phone was going with me no matter what, I guess.

Floyd is checking for his room key in his wallet and telling me to get a jacket. (It’s June 24, but we’re in Massachusetts and it’s cold outside.) Jacket? Oh, you mean my sweater. OK, I wouldn’t have thought of that. Got it. Phone, purse, wedding ring, sweater; I’m ready to go.

“Let’s go! Come ON!” That’s me nagging as usual. But he does come, and when I turn to join another gal on the elevator right beside our room, he says, quite definitively, “Stairs. We’re going down the stairs.” Well, I know everything you see about fires says don’t use the elevator, but this had just started and we were only on the second floor so I thought we could sneak down the elevator. I truly hate walking down steps; that’s a story for another day.

Fire door to stairway is pretty close and we’re nearly there. Greeting us in the stairway are all the folks from the five floors above us. Nobody’s distressed; it’s school fire drill day from the way they are handling this.

But I thought of the 110 floors in New York nearly 10 years ago. I thought of the more than 50,000 people in those buildings as we went down maybe 20 steps. Did the folks on the top have to go down 2200 steps? I walked outside into a cool late afternoon and felt safe, if a little shaken. They had no such privilege.

And I thought of the panic and crowd dynamic that can happen when people are truly afraid. Of course, our stairway had none of that, but I did wonder if I should let the children go first or the old folks. (Yes someone was actually older than me!)
So I waited a moment or two and then gently merged into the traffic pattern, turning to see if Floyd was coming because that man can disappear faster than you can blink. But he was there.
Calm group, quick trip. No problem.

What to do? I have to go to the bathroom of course. I’m heading around to the front of the building. Floyd practically pushes me to our rental car and says we’re going for a ride. OK, I can do that. “Hope you’ve got the key,” he wonders. This one isn’t even a key but an electronic gizmo, but I had it. That’s good. So we left, going past the staffer to ask if there’s a real fire.

“No, not really. Just somebody cooking made a lot of smoke in their room.”

I’m driving around the long end of the parking lot, with Floyd telling me I’d better hurry if I want to get out at all, because we can hear the sirens on the fire trucks. Three of them, it turned out. Three huge, red trucks. For smoke and no fire. Better safe than sorry, I guess.

We made it, turned left, and moseyed down the road toward…something or other.

That’s when Floyd just casually mentions why he insisted we go down the steps instead of sneaking down the elevator. I have to say here that I thought those “no elevator” rules were because of smoke and fire in the shaft and this time that couldn’t be so it was OK, right?

“No, I didn’t want to be in the elevator when they cut the electricity to it.” Out of the mouth of the genius.

“Cut the electricity? I never would have thought of that!”

“It’s the first thing I thought of and the first thing they should do in a fire.”

Scary. Glad he was with me. Glad he’s so smart. Glad I didn’t argue. Glad there was no real fire. Glad we had someplace to go. Glad…just glad we’re OK.