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The Fire on 28th street

 

2008

The fire on 28 my second location.

 

Our building on Northwest 28th was my second location, it was wonderful, although it looked extremely small from the front, the salon had a huge warehouse attached to it, that we converted to the spa. The warehouse had very little electrical wiring. The panel box was smaller then an average house.  Their where just a few plugs here and there, and that's where we did most of our business and we had a lot of things plugged in but often we would lose all the power in the back and we have to run chords from the front space of the salon, to the back. The day of the fire I went back the warehouse because the breaker flipped again and when I flipped it back I heard this large gouge (like the sound of an electrical panel shutting down) I walked back to the front and as I was explaining to the spa manager at the time, my skepticism about what just happened. At that moment, all the lights went out again and we heard a huge pop, I went back into the garage and the fire had just started, spitting flames out and up. This was an electrical fire, I grabbed the door, pulled it shut and locked myself into the room with a fire extinguisher. The spa manager is banging on the door for me to get out. Pretty sure she was having memories of the movie "BackDraft" I know I was.

 

    So, I began to just direct the fire extinguisher at the glow, through all the smoke, I focused on just watching the glow and pretty soon the glow went dark. It seemed the flames were finally put out, I opened the door after locking myself in. The spa manager now panicking, she asked me what happened I told her of course I put the fire out and I asked her, should we tell the clients that we had a fire? In mid sentence of trying to decide what we should do, we turned the corner, next thing you know she's screaming there's a fire get out, so we all made it to the sidewalk and called the fire department.

 

When they showed up they assessed the situation, found where the fire started, and made sure the fire had been put out. He chief then asked who was it that put the fire out? So of course, I smugly said it was me!!  The chief looked at me and said that was the stupidest thing I could've done, the next time I need to call the fire department, it was an electrical fire, and is extremely dangerous.  Then he said do you have smoking inhalation, do you need to go to the hospital? That's when it dawned on me, I didn't! I also looked at my clothes (wearing all black) I had no white soot or any of the fire extinguisher product on me, I smelled my hair and I didn't even smell like fire. It was then I knew that I had been protected by something bigger than me.  I should've had smoking inhalation, I should've had at least a white soot on me. I went back into the garage later after everyone left and saw where I had been walking back and forth in the one spot, and saw my footprints. I definitely should have had something on me.

We moved the salon the next month to the west side. This location had 45 hair stations. Converting half the space into yet again another spa.

 

 

 

 

 

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