I have never ate so much smoke as I did tonight. Coming home from Gracies at 3:20 I saw flames outside of Gardenview store on the pet store side under the Toronto housing for elderly and handicapped. I was the third person there and the other two were from the store and were fighting the fire. It was helpless to fight the fire as the flames were 20 feet higher than the store and 30 feet around the perimeter. I ran to the building to get the people out ...no concierge no one to let me in. A woman joined me and we repeatedly yelled outside the building. Finally someone came to the balcony and we had them pull the fire alarm. The supt came to the lobby and let me in. The elevator stopped working. We got access to the stairs. At each floor she ran one direction and I ran the other notifying the tenants. Its seven floors. The tenants are little old Chinese woman and men most could not understand English but they saw the fear in my eyes for them and the hall way was full of black smoke on every floor on the east side of the building. We moved as many to the west side of the building and she evacuated them down those stairs. I got the east side and all the people in wheel chairs and crutches to carry down. I carried twenty two people down before the fire dept got the fire out and sent me help. Out of breath for effort and choking on smoke I let the fire dept with respirators finish the task. I got a new task of rounding up all the old people and putting them in a meeting room and getting them chairs and doing a first aid check on them as far as respiratory issues. I put all my winter cloths on these guys to keep them warm. I stayed with them for 1:45 hours while the fire dept used fans to clear the hallways of smoke. I was responsible for a group of 90 people. I took room numbers of missing people and checked them with the other people we had in another part of the building. Gave a list of seven apts to the fire dept. They found people in every room I sent them to. When they brought those people to our room the older people were so happy and relieved..munication was a challenge...but they knew when they saw their friends brought in that things were going to be ok. we got all but twenty people back into their apts before I went home. The apts smell smokey but are safe. I forgot my hat on the head of a little old man in a wheel chair. He never said a word. We used fingers to make numbers for his floor and apt. I had carried him down earlier and he was in his pjs and bare feet in the chair. I felt so bad for these older people in their late seventies and eighties. When we took them in groups to the elevator I got handshakes and hugs and smiles of friendship. The Police thought I worked at the building when they asked for a statement about the fire until I told them I was passing by...they were surprised because I was the one supervising all these people and they were listening to me. I told them they saw I cared enough to get them to safety so they of course were going to do as i asked them too because they knew I was trying to help them. The hugs the handshakes, smiles and head nods were a very rewarding experience and I think I made a few new friends. My back is a mess and my eyes and lungs are destroyed but it was worth it.
Posted on: Fri, 21 Nov 2014 11:02:06 +0000
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