This weekend, I woke up at 1 am to my bathroom on fire. My mom was in the bathtub sleeping with a space heater in there. I woke up to her screaming my name. My apartment was flooded with smoke. I am not sure how long my mother had been screaming. I didn't even hear the fire alarm. I ran into my daughter's bedroom at first, thinking my mother was in there. My daughter immediately awoke as I bust through the door. I ran into the bathroom to see the bathroom (just part of it on fire). We had a small bookshelf in the bathroom where we kept all of the tissue, 2 packages of 24 rolls each. The whole entire bookshelf was in flames. My mother told me to grab the flour because the flames were trying to reach the ceiling. I threw it on the fire, but it wasn't working fast enough. So, she said to grab some water. My daughter was scared and grabbed a pitcher of water. She only put a little bit of water on the fire, so I grabbed the pitcher from her and began dousing the fire with water. Once the fire was out, the bookshelf that had originally caught fire was still smoking.
The fire alarm was going off for about a few hours, but no one called the fire department, and no neighbors woke up to check if we were okay. We never called the fire department ourselves because we were too busy trying to put the fire out. We didn't have a fire extinguisher in the entire house either.
My daughter has asthma. She and I had to go and sit in the car and wait for the smoke to dissipate while my mom cleaned up the mess in the bathroom, smoking tissue, burnt bookshelf, and all. My mother told me later that she had been burning candles (that were in jars) in the bathroom on top of that bookshelf. Needless to say, it took a while to even somewhat recover from that as I was so sleepy and exhausted, I couldn't do anything. My body was just really drained. My apartment still smells like a campfire and smoke. I did attach aftermath pictures, but I wasn't able to take pictures in the middle of it all.
We are okay, but mentally, that is never a good way to wake up. I am glad that is over.
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