Back in April 2020, my apartment building had a fire in one of the units. I was on my elliptical when it happened, and I could just BARELY hear the alarm from that came from the other half of the building. The alarms on my side didn't go off.
My place is a few blocks from the closest fire station, so there were firemen on scene by the time I was sure I was hearing something somewhere, and once they saw me poke my head out the door downstairs, they made me come out, even though I was wearing nothing but my shoes and shorts. I told them I have pets and would like to get some clothes on and they were like "Come out or we'll make you." I didn't even have my phone.
I live ~500 feet from the shore of Lake Michigan and an early April night is not exactly a warm time to begin with. Fortunately, I did have some clothes in my car, but my car was also blocked in by the gathering collection of emergency vehicles.
As it turned out, somebody had a failed methamphetamine experiment going on the other side of my building, literally as far away from my unit as it could have been, but I had to sit in my car for eight hours because the city hadn't serviced hydrants in my neighborhood in a couple years. All the water lines were overgrown with vegetation. We just had to wait for pump trucks to show up and then for every other emergency vehicle to be shuffled out of the way so the water and hoses could get close enough to do anything useful. Putting out the fire took two minutes, tops, but there was another four hours of waiting while the building was checked for burning in the walls and roof. During all that time, nobody went in to get my pets (and two of them wouldn't have let a stranger touch them anyway) and even though I was sure my place was as safe as it could be, the level of anguish I had about my cats was probably one of if not the worst feelings I've ever had in my life.
My apartment was the only unit in the building that had nearly no smoke damage and it was determined that my place was also safe from carbon monoxide, probably because my balcony door had been open the whole time. My cats were fine. I found them all huddled under my bed. They didn't turn power back on until morning, either, and wiping down my walls took care of the actual "damage" I had.
For everyone else, the Red Cross was on the scene and getting shit done hours before the fire was out. Most of my neighbors spent the next month in a hotel that was apparently funded by the Red Cross. Most of the people living in my building did not have renter's insurance and most of them lost everything they had, including pets, entirely from smoke and carbon monoxide. The building itself was pretty resilient to the fire. It didn't actually spread out of the original unit. The smoke sure did.
I wound up being the only official tenant in the building for about seven months while all the other apartments were rehabbed. I used the other apartments on my floor as photography space for a while, which is maybe the only good thing about the experience.
Definitely grab shoes, pants and a hoodie or something when you're getting out of a fire alarm situation and grab your pets or NASes or whatever because the fire people sure as shit won't care about anything you think is valuable. I keep a bug-out bag with essentials by my front door and another in my car, and there's also a dedicated space now where I leave my phone, keys, laptop and camera bags and a cat carrier..
