confronted with an emergency situation
Emergency Situation
I remember when I was around eight years old, there was a fire emergency while I was home. My parents had gone to work, and it being a weekend, they were supposed to be back by midday. Meanwhile, I was tasked with looking after my small brother and sister, Lily and John. My mother, as usual, left me a long list of chores that I was supposed to do. Most importantly, she had instructed me to clean the rustiness that was starting to appear on our smoke detector. I must admit back then that I was not the best of the mannered child. My ignorance and often lack of concentration had left me in trouble on many occasions. Long story short, I forgot to do the main thing that my mother had instructed.
Being a weekend, and my parents usually not being at home during the morning hours, I decided to invite my friend over. Tony was my best friend, and we went to the same school and were in the same grade. He showed up with his two cousins visiting for a family function, and we hung out the four of us in my bedroom playing Dragons. Meanwhile, I had distracted my two siblings with the TV, leaving them unsupervised. Things were going great when one of Tony’s cousins asked, “does someone smell that?” “Smell what?” I asked. After a while, we started smelling smoker. At first, I assumed the neighbors were burning some garbage and leaves in their backyard. However, I turned to look at the bottom door space, and I could see the smoke was slowly entering my room.
We all jumped out of my bed and quickly headed for the seating room. What I saw shook me to the core. The kitchen curtains were engulfed in a huge fire, and smoke had filled the whole house. I struggled to find my siblings through the smoke, and although I could not see clearly, I could hear them choking from the smoke. I found them and quickly took them outside the house. I picked the water horse outside and sprayed my face with water, doing the same for my siblings. People had started gathering around, confused and worried. My neighbor came to our rescue and took us a bit far from our burning house. The windy Saturday only did worse to the situation, as the house was quickly burning down. The next thing I remembered was hearing the sirens of a fire truck and seeing them trying to stop the fire.
Later, our parents had shown up, and the situation contained. “Hope you guys are okay, we are going to run some tests to make sure that the smoke did not do any damages to you. I’m sure you’ll be fine,” said one of the follow firefighters. “But why didn’t the smoke detector go off in the first place?” asked my dejected father. And that is when it hit me, I had forgotten to clean the smoke detector!
As much as the cause of the fire could not be established, I felt guilty for my lack of action to clean the device. Looking back, I should have been more responsible and cleaned the device as I had been instructed. My ignorance almost killed me and my siblings. If I went back in time, I would ensure that the device was properly cleaned and the other chores are done in time. I would not allow myself to be reckless, especially when I was left in charge of looking after my brother and sister.
