What would you grab?

You know that hypothetical question that people always ask- if there was a fire and you had to get out of your house right away, what would you grab?  I discovered my answer last night...

Will and I were awoken from a dead sleep when our building's fire alarm went off around 12:45 AM last night. Not sure what was going on, I opened our front door and found a ton of smoke in the hallway. Wowza. Talk about scary.  I grabbed my purse (but only because it was right by the door) and we ran down the front stairs, joined a bunch of our neighbors in front of our building, and waited for the fire department to show up.   So...yeah.  Apparently my answer to the age-old question is: Will and my purse.  I was much more concerned about getting us out safely and quickly than I was about grabbing pictures, keepsakes, or anything like that.  Humans are more important.

As it turns out, our building did NOT catch on fire. Whew! A fireman told us that some idiot decided it would be fun to steal a fire extinguisher from the first floor, take the elevator to our floor (the 4th) and set it off in the hallway.  And no, he didn't actually use the word 'idiot' when he explained what happened, but I'm sure he wanted to...I know I did (in addition to some other choice words that aren't blog appropriate). 

I was unaware that using a fire extinguisher creates a huge smoke cloud of chemicals that suck all the oxygen out of a room and then causes the fire alarms to go off.  We were so freaked (and groggy) by the sight of smoke in the hallway that it failed to register with us that there was no smoke smell, nor was it hot in the hallway.  The fire department aired out the hallway by using massive fans to get the chemicals out of the air, and we were able to get back inside after an hour or so.  This is what our hallway looked like as we came back upstairs:

Awesome, huh?  I can hear someone in the hallway now, working on cleaning up the mess.  I really hope whoever caused this is found out and punished accordingly. Because it wasted precious beauty sleep as well as the fire department's time.  It was pretty scary when it happened, then really annoying once we discovered what was really going on.  But at least I now know my answer to the "what would you grab" question.