Friday, January 8, 2010

Fire!

Friday started out just like any other day.  By late afternoon, I had finished my first three classes and I was wrapping up my fourth class. Now just two classes stood between me and the weekend.  With about five minutes left in my 5:40 class, I heard a fire alarm, but it sounded far away, almost as if it was coming from another building.  I was teaching in a classroom on the fifth floor that faced the street, so all we could see was the glow of a fire from somewhere.  I began to smell smoke, so I went to the hallway to see what was going on. Through the window in the stairwell, I could see that the building next to my school was engulfed in flames.  Some of the other classes began to pour out into the hallway.  I went back to my class and told my students to grab their jackets and put on their shoes.  We headed down to the lobby on the second floor where most of the students had gathered.  Apparently, some classes had tried to leave the school, but the smoke was too intense.  The building on fire was a three story construction project that has been sitting vacant for at least a year. It is also only about ten feet from ECC.  As I was standing in the stairwell, waiting to see what the plan was, a firefighter came up the stairs and began to direct everyone out of the building.  I went back to the office to grab my jacket and put on my shoes.  From the window, I could see two cars in ECC's driveway that were on fire.  It was a little chaotic leaving the school.  Directions were being shouted in Korean and there was ash and embers raining down on us.  One of the receptionist's scarves caught on fire.  Some people's jackets were singed. We walked down the street away from the fire as quickly as we could.  Thankfully no one was hurt during the incident.  Things are handled a little differently here than they are in the States.  The road in front of the school was never closed.  In fact at one point, the firefighters ran a hose across the street to another fire hydrant, but the cars were still allowed to drive across it.  That was fine until a bus went over it and broke the hose.  After about an hour, all of the teachers met at a coffee shop to figure out what we had to do.  The Korean teachers were going to call the parents to make sure all of the students made it home safely, but there wasn't much for the foreign teachers to do.  I didn't have my camera with me, but Whitney did, and here are some of her pictures.

We met back at ECC on Saturday to see what we could do to help.  The school is calling in a cleaning crew, so there wasn't anything for us to do.  I was able to take some pictures of the damage.