Smoke and Miracles: How My Neighbour Cheated Death

I probably might have said this in another blog or maybe not, but people really don't pay much attention to how disastrous an event could have been, simply because the disaster was somehow averted. And for some reason, whenever I think about it, it bugs me...because imagine you almost getting hit by a car but it misses you only by an inch, how do your legs not quiver out of the thought that you literally could have been dead some few seconds ago?

The reason why I ask is because I actually happen to be on the other side of the fence when it comes to this. Whenever I get out of a dangerous situation that could have turned really really ugly if things had gone differently, I find myself really thinking about how my life could have changed if things had gone the opposite way. And recently, I had one of those experiences, although it didn't really happen directly to me but to someone I know.

About two nights ago, I had gone outside around 11pm to bring in some of my clothes that were outside. It had rained all day so everyone was inside of their rooms, coupled with the fact that we had power supply so there was really no reason for anyone to be outside at that time.

When I went outside to get the clothes, I had perceived something in the air that smelled like a burnt food, but I had paid little attention to it because I had felt that whoever food it was probably had just taken it off the fire after realising that the food was getting burnt.

Fast forward to about 1am later in the morning, I still was up finishing on some work and seeing a movie at the same time, when all of a sudden everywhere went dark. Our power had been interrupted and I knew it wasn't coming back on until some time later in the day, so I decided to open my door and just let some fresh air in before going to bed and that was when I perceived it again.

That same burnt food odor was still in the air, this time a lot stronger. So instead of ignoring it, I decided to investigate even though it was late. So I started moving from door to door, sniffing each door I walk past like a K9 police dog. By the time I got to the third door down the line, I could not only perceive where the smell was coming from, I could see it too.

_{photo by Damon Lam}

It turned out one of my neighbours had tried making dinner after coming back home from work and in the process she had fallen asleep and left the pot on fire. By the time I got to her door, the whole room was covered with smoke and sadly the poor girl laid there, sleeping, obviously tired from the day's work.

Immediately, I had started knocking on her door which woke her up before she ran to turn off her gas-cooker before running outside of the room because she couldn't breathe properly anymore.

By this time, more than half the door rooms on my floor was now open as everyone came outside, trying to know what happened. Luckily no one got hurt and we all ended up laughing about the whole thing before everyone retired for the night for the second time.

But even after I went inside, I couldn't help but think about how disastrous that whole thing could have gotten if I had decided to ignore the smell like I did the first time and that lady had passed away due to her inhaling all of that bad smoke or even worse, what if the hostel had caught on fire, therefore killing more than one person because we all would be asleep?

The thought of it scared me and I'm just glad we laughed about it instead because it could have ended a lot worse.