It was 12:30 in the morning and my husband, dogs, and I were fast asleep when we were suddenly woken by the sound of a smoke alarm. But it wasn’t our smoke alarm. It was our upstairs neighbor’s alarm. We lived in a two-story duplex at the time with little sound barrier between the two units. My husband went outside and saw smoke pouring from the roof. He went up to our neighbor’s and tried knocking on the door and windows, but no one answered. We called 9-1-1, gathered our dogs, and left our apartment. Within minutes, a fire crew arrived.
Our neighbor had fallen asleep while cooking pasta. They had been asleep long enough that all the water had evaporated, and the pasta was burning to the bottom of the pot. The firemen pounded on the door but had to break in and shake our neighbor awake. They told my husband that had no one called, our neighbor could have quickly succumbed to smoke inhalation as their apartment was filled.
Although the damage to our neighbor’s apartment was minimal and our apartment had no damage, it was a scary situation. We are thankful that we and our neighbor had working smoke alarms. Had we not, the outcome could have been much worse. We are now even more diligent about testing our alarms and changing the batteries because we know this little device potentially saved our lives.