I very quickly had a rush of feelings that reminded me of May 26, 2004, the day the building directly next to mine suffered a fire on that apparently started on the second-floor deck and worked its way up to the attic of the building. From there, since the attics in these 6- to 7-year old buildings do not contain any type of sprinkler system, the fire spread undeterred to the rest of the third floor. Eventually, most of the roof of the building collapsed. The fighting of this fire caused extensive water damage to the rest of the building. It was torn down within 6 weeks, has since had a replica replacement built in its place, which already has tenants.

The feeling I had that day was true helplessness. The main difference tonight was that I was home. I actually was still up playing a video game on my computer at the time that the alarm went off. So I now know, it's a damn good thing I was. If I was asleep in my bedroom, I never would have heard a peep. In fact, I wonder how many people in my building slept through the whole thing.

I quickly got up, ran back to Anna, woke her up ("the fire alarm's going off" gets people awake in a hurry), got the kids, blankets, shoes, pants (where applicable) and heading down the stairs. We found most of the residents had stopped there simply because no one knew if anything was legit at that point. I handed Jacob to Anna (after making sure that she was okay with that) and ran to start the car. I figured with a nice, fairly new car with a nearly-full tank of gas still not blocked by any emergency vehicles, there was no way my kids were standing out in the cold.

I got back inside and by that point a resident had jogged up to the third floor (I'm on the second) and said that that was where the fire was. So, out to the car we went.

For the rest of the whole half-hour overreaction, we camped in the car, waiting for some sort of word on what was going on. I sat and thought of the things that would need replacing and all the things that couldn't be replaced. I also counted my lucky stars for that fire in May. I'll explain in just a second.

After about 25 minutes of just sitting in the car, a fireman walked up to the door of the car and asked if we were waiting to get back into the building. After confirming with him that we were on the second floor, he said, "Go ahead and go back in." So, we did, with very little hesitation.

Now, why would I be thankful for a fire in the apartment building next door? Well, for several reasons. For one, up until then, we never bothered to get renter's insurance. The fire was on May 26th; we had a policy on the 27th. For another, it forced me to think-through what we'd do in a fire and also forced me to pay attention to where the fire alarms are in our building. For another, it made me create a picture of everything we own for insurance reasons. Basically, it forced me to do all those little things you always hear that you should do just in case such a thing should happen to you.

Just in case you didn't figure it out from all of this, Anna, Jacob, Andrew and I are all just fine, as are all of our belongings. In fact, this turned out to be such a small deal that I was going to get pictures of the fire trucks after getting the kids back to bed, but they were gone within about 5 minutes of us coming back upstairs. I'm not sure what went on, but it clearly wasn't much.

I'm very impressed with the West Des Moines Fire Department. They were here within about 5 minutes of the fire alarms going off. They brought two full fire trucks, an ambulance plus a couple of police officers. All in all, I'm genuinely impressed. It's good to know that I'm safe in their hands.

Professional Property Management, the company that runs the Sun Prairie Apartments, has some improvements to make. As I mentioned above, there's no way I ever would have heard a thing if I wasn't sitting at my computer, which is no more than 12 feet from the door. The really scary thing is that the fire alarm is mounted on the wall on the other side of the hallway from my door. The alarms simply have to be louder. I wasn't the least bit bothered by them on my way out.

All in all, this was a very scary, but ultimately uneventful late night for me. I need sleep, maybe even a day off work. Come snow, come. Close the joint down. Please.

I'm happy to repor that as of the posting time, I have an exclusive on this story. Go me.