Fire Alarm

We had a fire alarm in our apartment complex last night after my husband and our friend who's temporarily living with us went to sleep. I was awake thankfully and heard it out in the hall. I went and woke up everyone, tried to look for out kittens' travel carrier, couldn't find it, so I threw a blanket around Tiger (Mr. Panic-Around-Strangers) as my husband held Angel. We should've wrapped her too but I was just thinking about getting everyone outside.
Walking down the hall, Angel and Tiger are not crying but screaming! I've never seen them fuss like that! I had Tiger, the big baby, and once we got outside with everyone else in the complex, they started to calm down a bit. Poor Tiger was shaking like a leaf under his comfort blanket for about 10 minutes! Angel was pretty calm although she did claw at my husband's shoulder. We then walked over to our car which was right by the apartment entrance and sat in it while watching the firemen come and go inside the building. A lot of our neighbors haven't seen our kittens since we had first got them and were amazed at how big they both have gotten. The kids wanted to see them too, of course!
There was NO smoke or anything! My hubby thinks that a kid pulled the alarm. He always thinks of things like that. But I did hear one guy on his cell that he saw smoke near the elevators which one is under construction for a new one. Maybe someone saw just dust and thought that it was smoke?
Well, after about 40 minutes of waiting for them to reset the alarms on every floor, we were able to go back inside. As we got to our room, it was like they recognized the door and and were wanted to leap out of our arms to get inside! They're a bit skittish today though. Tiger's been following me around like I'm going to disappear soon. I hope it passes.

I'm really glad there wasn't an actual fire!

Originally Posted by Lorie D.

I'm really glad there wasn't an actual fire!

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Same here because it was only after that we realized we forgot about our papers; marriage license, birth certificates, cat's shot records, our shot records, etc. We had a 'plan' to grab them if there was a fire and totally forgot about it!

After a friend lost all his paperwork in a fire, I got myself a firesafe. It is a locked box made of fiberglass and steel. It will protect your important paperwork. You can just keep it under the bed or in a safe corner (they suggest at the base of a structural wall) and not have to worry about grabbing all this stuff while panicked about finding cat carriers.

Originally Posted by Sweets

After a friend lost all his paperwork in a fire, I got myself a firesafe. It is a locked box made of fiberglass and steel. It will protect your important paperwork. You can just keep it under the bed or in a safe corner (they suggest at the base of a structural wall) and not have to worry about grabbing all this stuff while panicked about finding cat carriers.

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We looked at those but they're too expensive for us at the moment. That'll be a good investment though in the future.

Oh my gosh how scary!!! Your poor babies! We always keep at least 1 cat carrier in an accessible place and put together in case of emergencies. Plus the girls like to hide in them!

About fire safes, this is one similar to what DH and I have and it costs just under $20 at Walmart: http://www.walmart.com/catalog/produ...duct_id=882239 Someday we'll probably want a bigger one, but it works for now! We even keep the negatives from our wedding photos in there. I don't know if having the box get hot would destroy them, but they have a better shot in there I figure! We also had that one at my last job to keep our backup discs and things in.

Originally Posted by MoochNNoodles

Oh my gosh how scary!!! Your poor babies! We always keep at least 1 cat carrier in an accessible place and put together in case of emergencies. Plus the girls like to hide in them!

About fire safes, this is one similar to what DH and I have and it costs just under $20 at Walmart: http://www.walmart.com/catalog/produ...duct_id=882239 Someday we'll probably want a bigger one, but it works for now! We even keep the negatives from our wedding photos in there. I don't know if having the box get hot would destroy them, but they have a better shot in there I figure! We also had that one at my last job to keep our backup discs and things in.

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Well, our wedding photos are all on CD and everyone in my family and my husband's family has a copy! So we don't have to worry too much about those. That does seem like a reasonable price! It looks small though. The ones at our BX (Base exchange) is around $75 but it's designed to fit papers and folders in.

It could be bigger. We fit what we needed in it though. Plus some extra stuff. Things like our marriage certificate came folded anyway.

The cheaper ones only last 1/2 hour in a typical room fire, they are not worth much when an apartment building is on fire so make sure you take it with you when you leave. We keep our carriers and one of those firesafe boxes together so we can find them after going through 3 late night fire alarms (2 false alarms and one real one but the damage didn't spread from that apartment)

I'm so glad there wasn't an actual fire. That would be too scary. One thing you might want to think about is a safety deposit box at a bank. They are fire proof, but they are much cheaper. I think my mom paid $15.00/year for hers. It was small, but it held all her orginal important paperwork. You can make copies and keep them at home, but that way the originals are safe.