Grrr, October has been a ridiculously stressful month for me, so I've been busy dealing with personal and family issues instead of being here on HH. But what happened last weekend is too important not to share, and will hopefully help you in the case of an emergency evacuation with your pets.
Early Sunday morning, the apartment in the row adjacent to us went up in a huge fireball around 1:30am - luckily the hubby was still awake and saw it. We both ran out - he to grab his car which was parked under the flaming building, and me to sound the alarm because no one else was yelling "FIRE!" Then that apartment's windows exploded and embers started flying. Our own apartment was directly across from theirs by only 15 feet, so I completely panicked and ran back to grab the furkids. Not only was there the danger of the fire jumping over to our row, but I was afraid that the hubby would force me to leave the kids behind if I couldn't pack them up in time.
I honestly thought I was prepared for a quick emergency evac with my rodents - I always keep carriers right next to the cages for that reason. But the scenarios I was prepping for always assumed that everyone would be ready to go at the cage doors. Oh god, I couldn't have been more wrong. The kiddos knew something was wrong (and quite possibly picked up on my panic), so they were hiding out in various hammocks, boxes, and hidey-toys. It felt like it took forever to find them all, and even more precious time to pry them from their hiding spots. To make matters worse, my hands (which have circulation problems) completely seized up and made grabbing everyone far more difficult.
Then there was an awful moment when I lost one of my rats - she had bolted from the carrier and dashed underneath the cage. I have a CritterNation, and it has a shelf that's a couple inches off the ground. Once they go under that shelf, its nearly impossible to fish them back out. Normally I have to coax them out from under with treats, but I didn't have time for that. I reached under, and purely by luck managed to grab a hold of her tail. One of the worst ways you can injure a rat is to grab their tail and pull, but I couldn't chance losing hold of her and took that risk.
Luckily I was almost done packing up everyone by the time the hubby returned from rescuing the car. Most of our important stuff was already concentrated in the closet, so he was able to sweep everything that mattered into a couple backpacks, and we ran with pets and belongings in tow.
All things considered, we were extremely lucky. Although the fire completely gutted 6 apartment units, everyone got out safely and no one was injured. Our own place is fine, and despite being completely traumatized from being manhandled into carriers, the kiddos are doing well, even the one whose tail I pulled.
This is the view from the hubby's office. The boarded up window is one of three from the on-fire apartment. The pink room to the left is the nursery for the next door neighbor's little girl. They got heavy damage too, and you can see where the roof used to be. But the other side of the building, nothing is left - its just a charred gaping void. The side wall that you see in the picture is the only thing left standing.
Edited by rhapsody, 23 October 2013 - 02:48 AM.
Was it a kitchen fire that started it or something? 
That's really sad about the apartments it did damage though. 
I feel especially bad about that little girl's room. I'm assuming she was okay and everyone else got out safely?
