Umbra by Kishore Murthy

0230 hrs on Friday I wake up to a continuous screeching noise to find my wife already awake. We look around trying to figure out what was causing it. I check the baby monitor to see if that was the issue. I hear my wife screaming from the other room “Its the fire alarm.. its the fire alarm”. Both of us run around frantically, I get the baby and my passport. My wife grabs her passport, baby’s passport, car keys, a blanket and bottle of milk for the baby before running out.

As we run down the stairs we don’t see/smell any fire or smoke. Once outside we see people coming out of the building one after another, most of them in their bed clothes. One old lady walked out with her cat in the carrier.

We make ourselves comfortable in the car where it is warmer (it was chilling out) and the screeching of the fire alarm is subdued. Anju seems unperturbed and rather amused. I give her the bottle of milk and she is happy .

Couple of minutes pass and a fire truck pulls up… then another and another. Three fire trucks came to check the situation out… I felt safer already. One of them parked right behind where our car was parked and I had to put my hands over Anju’s eyes to shield her from the flashing lights. Some tense minutes pass and we find out that it was a false alarm, an electrical glitch or something in the basement of the apartment building. Thank God!

It takes them a little while before they manage to shut the alarm off and we went back to our apartments safe and sound. In one way it was good that this happened… I will be better prepared the next time. After all this was the first time I had been in a fire emergency false or true out here in the US.

Kudos to the fire department for the quick response.