Kapiolani Community College
Diamond Journal 2003Fall

Trapped
Vanessa Morton

It is dark in the room when I am awakened by a tapping noise. I sit up in my bed and look around. As my eyes adjust to the room, not only can I see smoke, but I can smell the smoke as well. I go to wake my father and when he is finally awake he realizes the building is on fire. He goes to the only door and tries to open it. The door won’t open. There is a lot of smoke coming up from under it. That’s when I start to panic; after all we are “only” on the top floor of an eight-story building. I become confused. “Why aren’t the fire alarms going off and where are the sirens? Maybe I’m dreaming. I have to be dreaming. This can’t be happening. Please, God, let this be a dream.”

It is no dream; we are trapped in a burning building with no way out. “Where the hell are the fire trucks”? I don’t hear any sirens and then it dawns on me, no one has called to report the fire. I run to the telephone and I dial 911. When a lady answers, I tell her that we are trapped on the eighth floor of a burning building. We are going burn to death. She asks me to describe what is happening and to calm down. The firemen are on their way, because someone else has reported the fire as well. I tell her the smoke is so thick we can hardly breathe. I also tell her smoke is coming up from under the door and the door is so hot that it is swollen shut. She tells me to go to the bathroom and fill the bathtub with water then to soak towels in it and put them around the door. I do as she says.

I’m not the only one who is in a panic; my father is too. He has filled a pot with water and is carrying it around with him. I don’t know what good it will do, but I say nothing.

The smoke is getting thicker; the walls are getting blacker; we are definitely going to die. We go to the window to see if the fire trucks have arrived yet. They have. As I look out the window, I see thick black puffy smoke billowing up out of the windows that surround our apartment. I spot the apartment that is caddy corner from ours; our neighbor is hanging out of her window also. She looks as terrified as I feel. I must have the same wide-eyed look on my face as she does, filled with fear and filled with death. I wonder how many others are trapped in their apartments with no way out and suddenly I don’t feel so alone.

It feels like hours have passed and I wonder why they haven’t come to help us yet. Maybe they can’t get to us and we really are going to die. I see the truck and the ladder. I even see that they have the hoses going full blast; but they still haven’t come to help us. It is taking them so long. I don’t think we will ever get out of this alive. Looking down, I see they are getting the people on the lower floors out, but they haven’t gotten to anyone on the top floors. The firemen are everywhere. They are on the roof, on the ground and in mid-air, but no one’s come to help us yet.

Having had a heart attack a few years back, my father takes nitroglycerin tablets when he needs to. When I look over at him, I can see he is popping his pills like they were candy. Now I’m worried he will die from a heart attack before they are able to get us out. “What if he dies before help gets here?” I don’t want to be trapped in here alone to face the red-hot flames. I don’t want to die alone. What if the smoke sucks the life out of us first? My father put on a brave front, but I’m crying, saying over and over again, “We’re going to die, we’re going to die.” He tries to comfort me by telling me he’s all right and we will get out. Everything will be just fine, we are not going to die and the firemen will be here any minute. He is so brave and so right because, lo and behold, here they come up the big yellow ladder. Because of his heart condition, however, my father can’t climb down the ladder. He tells me to go down and get to safety, but I won’t go, not without him. I won’t leave him there trapped alone!

In the meantime, the firemen have gotten the fire under control from the roof and are able to break through to get to our floor. Now we are faced with a dilemma. How are we going to get out? We can’t get out through the door because the intense heat has soldered the door shut. This means we are still trapped. I can hear them on the other side of the door; they are going to chop through it. Once they break through the door, I am never so happy to see anyone in my life, anyone with an ax that is!

The ordeal isn’t over yet because now we have to find a way out of the building. Our only hope is the stairwell. We get out the door and head down the hall to the stairs, no easy task. The hall is pitch black. I can’t even see my hand in front of my face. I bump into a chair that is in the hallway outside the door of an apartment. I later find out it was the source of the fire. As we feel our way down the long dark hallway the water on the floor is so high we are wading in it. We still have to make our way to the stairwell. My father is having trouble breathing and all I can think about is getting out before something falls on us and kills us all. We are still in danger. When we finally reach the stairs, our red eyes are burning and the stench of the rancid smoke fills our nostrils and our lungs. I still feel trapped as we make our way down each flight of stairs, floor after floor, down to safety away from the dark smoke-filled building. As we find our way out of the building, fresh air fills our lungs and we can finally breathe. I can’t believe we finally make it out. I thought for sure we were going to die up there trapped like rats in a burning building. This is not a dream after all. This is as real as it gets. I didn’t realize how lucky we were until the following day when I went back to see if anything was salvageable. I lost “everything” in the fire...but not my life or the life of my father. I thank God for that every day of my life.