While watching the final scenes of “Pursuit of Happyness” the building fire alarm went off. In my experience, building alarms are generally false alarms, but I always evacuate nonetheless. Except this time I smelled smoke. So we scurried around to grab our coat, boots, and two big bins full of our important papers and took the 11-storey walk down the stairs, watching the floors fill up with denser and denser smoke on the way down.

Once we were outside, we saw the fire right away -  a recycling dumpster full of plastic, metal and glass had turned into a towering inferno, sending smoke up the garbage chutes and into the rest of the building. The sprinklers managed to suppress the worst of it until the fire trucks showed up, and the firepeople made quick work of the bin that had mostly burned itself out. No damage to the building, but lots of smelly lingering smoke, and I suspect some of the nearest cars in the parkade are going to smell like burning rubber. (I’m hoping mine was far enough away to only get a sprinkler washdown.)

It was kindof nice to hobnob outside with the neighbors and hear all the local gossip. Also witnessed a very interesting trend – nearly all the people who had pets evacuated, but people with kids stayed up on balconies. It was like Noah’s ark in the front lobby as everyone was piling back in.